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“BOTTLE bacillus

md infectious

oanobuff «»t.

USTEBINE

ANTISEPTIC

Pityrosporum ovale, regarded by
many leading authorities as a caus-
ative agent of infectious dandruff.

Germs?

Flakes?

Itching?

Don’t expect "over night” remedies to take
cr r e of the infectious type of dandruff.

When you have an infection, it should be
treated as such . . . with antiseptic action.
It’s really impressive how frequently the
combination of Listerine Antiseptic and mas-
sage brings improvement.

It’s easy. It’s simple. It’s delightful. And
you can apply it at home any time you want to.

Listerine Antiseptic kills millions of the
Stubborn "bottle bacillus” germs, held by
many dermatologists to be a causative agent
of infectious dandruff.

Almost at once those annoying flakes and
scales begin to disappear. Itching is alleviated.
Your scalp glows and tingles after the treat-

ment and your hair feels delightfully fresh.

Remember, the Listerine Antiseptic treat-
ment is the tested method. In one test 76", >
of the patients showed complete disappear-
ance of, or marked improvement in, the
symptoms of dandruff at the end of four
weeks.

Lambert Pharmacai. Co., St. Louis, Mo.

.. The TREATMENT

WOMEN: 1 ’art I ho hair at various places, and
apply Listerine Antiseptic.

MEN : Douse full strength Listerine Antiseptic,
on the scalp morning and night.

Always follow with vigorous and persistent
massage. Listerine Ant iseptic is t he same germi-
cide that has been famous for more than (»')
years in the field of oral hygiene.

At the First 5 ) tnptom -LISTERINE ANTISEPTIC

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My address City...

ASTOUNDING

SCIENCE-FICTION

TITLE REGISTERED U. S. PATENT OFFICE

Contents for August, 1943, Vol. XXXI, No. 6

John W. Campbell, Jr., Editor, Catherine Tarrant, Assistant Editor

Serial

JUDGMENT NIGHT C. L. Moore . ... 9

First of two parts of C. L. Moore’s first science-fiction novel— of a fight
for the existence of an empire and a race, a fight that depended, in the
end, on how one man and one woman handled their own affairs.

Novelette

ONE-WAY TRIP . . Anthony Boucher . . 79

An artist found a new way to handle the problem of self-portraiture —
another man saw a way to world rule — another was doomed, shot out into
space on the one-way tri$ to nowhere — because of a curious mineral!

Short Stories

THE MUTANT'S BROTHER .... Fritz Leiber, Jr. . . . 53

Twins raised apart from birth have very different characters — environ-
ment counts a lot. And if the twins are mutants, with (inhuman powers,
the application of those powers may be vastly different.

ENDOWMENT POLICY Le wis Padgett . . .118

The kindly old gentleman wanted to give the young taxi driver a present.

A very wonderful present, entirely free — but decidedly not without very
adequate — if very strange — reason.

M 33 IN ANDROMEDA A. E. van Vogt . . .129

There was menace in M 33 — menace that saturated the whole galaxy. Yet
it wasn’t an alien, intelligent and belligerent race. No planet in the
galaxy bore a dangerous life-form. But the destroyer was there —

WHEN IS WHEN? Malcolm Jameson . .143

Anachron fnc. had things pretty well worked out. After all, time-
traveling is bound to be safe, they figured. If a man gets into danger,
you need only go back and warn him—’ Unless he simply, inexplicably
vanishes in Time —

Article

THE END OF THE ROCKET SOCIETY Willy Ley . ... . 64

Ley was one of the principal workers of the German Rocket Society —
and knows what it accomplished and why it ended. Both are of interest
to science-fiction; in this two-part article are the answers.

Readers’ Departments

THE EDITOR'S PAGE *

IN TIMES TO COME 128

BRASS TACKS 155

Concerning Purely Personal Preferences.

BOOK REVIEW U1

COVER BY TIMMINS

Illustrations by Hall, Kolfiker, Kramer and Williams

Monthly publication Issued by Street & Smith Publications, Incorporated, 79 Seventh Avenuo, New
York City. Allen L. Grammer, President- Gerald H. Smith, Vice President and Treasurer;
Henry W. Ralston, Vice President and Secretary. Copyrifht, 1943, in U. S. A. and Great Britain
by Street Ml Smith Publications, Inc. Reentered as Second-class Matter, February 7, 1938. at the
Post Office at New Yerk, under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. Subscriptions to Countries in
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tion. No actual persons are designated either by name or character. Any similarity is coincidental.

STREET & SMITH PUBLICATIONS, INC. e 79 SEVENTH AYE., NEW YORK

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Noncommunication

Radio

A moderate degree of reading between
the lines — both front lines and news-
paper lines — makes it reasonably clear
that science-fiction authors are going to
be in an uncomfortable spot, come the
end of the war. When hostilities end,
the technical journals— now devoted to
articles shifting decimal points and
theses on the place of scientists in war —
are going to explode with articles on
basic discoveries. It will probably be
two years or so before most of the first-
line technical scientific journals will
have worked off the backlog of funda-
mental-discovery articles, and begin to
find space for articles on new applica-
tions of the new fundamental discov-
eries.

During that initial period, any science-
fictionist is almost certain to see his
story predicting invention X on the
stands about the same time one of the
technical journals describes how, back
in the latter part of 1942, invention X
was worked out, superseded by the
greatly improved invention Y, and
finally discarded when invention Z, in
late 1943, combined the functions of in-
vention X with three new functions, R,
S and T, with a greatly increased over-
all effectiveness.

This war-caused break in interna-
tional scientific information exchange
came at a highly critical moment in the
progress of science. Ten years ago
■ — say 1930 — there was a period of
general assimilation of previously dis-
covered fundamentals, and no great
increase in fundamental discovery in
immediate prospect. During the ’30s,
at least five fundamental discoveries
in atomic physics were made — the
neutron and positron were discovered

then, for instance; not picayune recon-
siderations of pre-existent discoveries,
but basic discoveries that completely
changed the picture. The cyclotron and
synthetic radioactive isotopes came in
then. There was a decade of extremely
rapid fundamental advance— but the
decade of those discoveries simply
opened the way to their exploitation in
the next decade. We’d found the keys ;
the next decade would see them turned
in the locks that sealed new whole cabi-
nets of learning.

The keys are turning — but the key
turners aren’t telling now what they
find in those cabinets. After the war,
the announcements will come.

In 1930, “electronics” and “radio”
were practically synonymous, and
“radio” meant “wireless communication
between two persons at considerable
distances.”

Now, “electronics” is to “radio” as
“cooking” is to “cake baking.” Johnny
Q. Public doesn’t understand that yet ;
in 1939, when war silence clamped
down, like a graduate of a high-school
domestic science course, cake baking was
about all electronics had really learned
to handle. And radio is divided into
two broad fields— communication radio
and noncommunication radio. You’ve
read about spy rays and the like in
science-fiction? Well, we can’t really
say that noncommunication radio is
quite that, but it’s a first-rate ersatz.
The general field covers any form of
radio not used to communicate between
two persons ; more specifically, it’s radio
used to reach out, pick up information
at a distance, and come home with the
data. It’s radio reconnaissance, and a

NONCOMMUNICATION RADIO

hundred other things. The radar is the
best known — practically the only pub-
licly known — example of noncommuni-
cation radio. It supplies man with an
intangible tactile sense that can reach
out hundreds of miles to “feel” an
enemy approaching. (Nature missed a
bet on that one ; no life form, so far
as known, developed the radar sense.
What a time a lion would have sneak-
ing up on a radar-protected deer ! But
Nature did give bats something of a
radar sense. The bat squeaks, issuing
sharp little spurts of high-frequency
sound, and the reflection of those sound
waves tells the bat of invisible obstruc-
tions. Very useful to a night-flying
animal, and makes possible the use of
absolutely lightless caves as homes,
caves so lightless no other type of crea-
ture can follow to attack.)

Electronics has been most applied in
this war; atomic physics is handicapped
to date by two major factors. First,
and most important, is the fact that it
could end the war in a daw in a frac-
tion of a second, beyond doubt— but
there’s considerable doubt as to
whether there would then be a post-
war-world to worry about. Be it re-
membered, we are not fighting to end
the war ; we’re fighting to have the
kind of world wherein men can live in
freedom. For that to be possible there
must be at least a world wherein men
can live. 1 In its present state, atomic
physics applied to war might, like the
headsman’s ax, prove the “sharp medi-
cine that cures all ills.”

The second handicap of atomic
physics devolves from the first. Ex-
perimentation must be done only after
it is no longer an exploratory, but a
confirmatory experiment. If a trial-
and-error electronic experiment goes
wrong, it may simply fail, it may blow
out a tube, -or may even kill a man—
but a blown-out tube is the usual pen-
alty. We can’t afford a penalty of a
blown-out continent, however, that
trial-and-error work in atomic physics
might entail.

Metallurgical research is never spec-
tacular, its results never impress the
public. The fact that one-hundred-
octane gasoline makes possible the mod-
ern two thousand horsepower plane
engine is vaguely accepted. The fact
that the metallurgical advances neces-
sary to produce metals capable of stand-
ing those strains such a power plant
imposes is harder to appreciate.

But the new metals, the radar-type

absolute altimeter, the radar-locator at

every airport, the new understanding of

aerodynamics, will all be needed to

make the helicopter jellopy. They’ll

make it possible for ground personnel

to lead Joe Dimwitte back to ground

out of a zero-zero fog bank so Joe’ll

still be around to buv next year’s model

* *

helicopter.

Since human minds work backward
in time far better than they do forward,
we blithely accept the immense changes
of the last fifteen years— but demand

«r

that at least one hundred fifty years be
taken for an equal percentage change
from our present status. Spy rays for
2103 — but not for 1953. Spaceships for
2024 — but not 1954.

When this war ends, probably eighty
percent of science-fiction is going to look
silly, because its predictions have been
so wild. We’ve had stories laid hun-
dreds of years hence wherein marvelous
new inventions were described — inven-
tions which were made and discarded
in favor of improved systems in 1942.

I don’t think they’ve developed time
travel vet : there wouldn’t have been a
war if they had, I don’t believe they’ve
developed effective, usable antigravity
yet ; Henry J. Kaiser would be building
somewhat different hulls if they had.
But I can’t at the moment think of any
other major science-fiction mechanism
_ that I’d be willing to bet isn’t in at least
a laboratory stage of development. But
I’m darned sure that the author who can
think up devices for science-fiction use
that are reasonably well ahead of the
technical journals after the war will be
really stretching his imagination.

EVEN DETECTIVE MIKE SHANE IS AT A LOSS!

There are so many good stories in the new
ALL FICTION DETECTIVE STORIES col-
lection, he doesn't know which to read first.

Of course, there's a Mike Shane complete
short novel, by Brett Halliday, called DEATH
GOES TO THE POST . . / but then there’s
THE SANTA CLAUS MURDERS, by Fred-
ric Brown, a complete book-length novel, and
' MIND OVER MURDER, by Margaret Mil-
lar; THE CLUE OF THE GOLD MONKEY,

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by Jessie Reynolds, two other short novels plus
three novelettes and short stories, too!

However, you can’t go wrong in picking
ALL FICTION DETECTIVE STORIES (from
the best of the fiction published in Street &
Smith magazines during the year). It’s a
whopping collection of mystery yarns for
only 25c. (30c in Canada/) Get your copy

now at all newsstands ... or fill out the cou-
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ALL FICTION DETECTIVE STORIES

79 SEVENTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y.

inclosed is 25c. (30c in Canada.) Kindly send me a copy of ALL FICTION DETECTIVE STORIES.

Name .

Address

City State

Judgment Night

by C. L.

First of two parts of a new, powerful novel by
one of science-fiction's finest writers— a novel
of a rebellion told from the viewpoint of
a girl who rebelled against the rebellion ,

Illustrated by Williams

Here in the flickering darkness of the
temple, a questioner stood silent before
the Ancients, waiting an answer he knew
he could not trust.

Outside were the soft green hills and
the misty skies of Ericon, but not even a
breath of that sweet rainy air blew
the portals of the House of the Ancients.
Nothing temporal ever touched them
now. They were beyond all time and
change. They had lived here since the
first silver ships came swarming through
the Galaxy; they would never die.

From this world of Ericon the pulse
of empire beat out through interstellar
space, tides waxing and ebbing and
breaking in distant thunder upon the
shores of the planets. For the race that
held Ericon held the Galaxy.

Kings and emperors beyond counting
had stood as this questioner stood now;
silent before the Ancients in their star-
shot dark. And the questioners were
always answered — but only the Ancients
knew if the answer meant its hearer’s
doom.

For the Ancients were stern in their
own strange code. No human minds
could fathom it. No human ever knew

if his race had met their rigid tests and
passed them, or if the oracle he received
was a mercy-blow that led by the quick-
est road to destruction.

Voiceless, unseen behind their high
altar, the Ancients anszvered a question
now. And small in the tremendous
shaking darkness of the temple, he who
had come to satisfy a doubt stood listen-
ing.

“ Let them fight,” the uiispcaking
oracle said. “Be patient a little longer.
Your hour is almost here. They must
have their chance in the final conflict
that is nearly upon them now — but you
know how blind they are. Be patient.
Be silent. Watch all they say and do,
but keep your secret — ”

The hundred emperors of Ericon
looked down gravely out of their hun-
dred pasts upon Juille, striding with a
ring of spurs through the colored twi-
light of their sanctum.

“If I were a man,” said Juille, not
turning her head, “maybe you’d listen
to me.”

No answer,

“You used to want a son," reminded

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Juille, and heard her own voice echo and
re-echo high up among the arches where
sunlight came pouring through plastics
the color of jewels.

“I know, I know,” the old emperor
said from the platform behind her.
“When I was your age, I was a fool,
too.”

Juille flashed him a sudden grin over
her shoulder. Once in a while even
now, she thought, you could catch a
glimpse of the great and terrible man her
father had once been.

Out of their crystal-walled niches his
predecessors and hers looked down as
she strode past them. Here were men
who had conquered the Galaxy world by
reluctant world, great warriors who had
led their armies like devouring flame
over alien planets and alien seas and the
passionless seas of space. Here were
emperors who knew the dangerous ways
of peace and politics, who had watched
civilization mount tier upon shining tier
throughout the Galaxy.

She turned at the end and came back
slowly along the rows of later rulers, to
whom peace and the Galaxy and a rich
heritage of luxury had been an old story.
Pride of race was strong upon all these
faces. People on outworld planets had
worshiped them as gods. All of them
had been godlike in the scope of their
tremendous powers, and the knowledge
of it was vivid upon their faces. Not
many men have looked up by night with
a whole planet for a throne, to watch the
stars that are their empire parading in
slow review across the heavens. Such
knowledge would give even a weak face
an appalling pride and dignity, and none
of the emperors of Ericon had been
weak. Men like that would not live
very long upon the throne of the Galaxy
of Lyonese.

The last three faces in the row had
known humiliation almost as vast in its
scope as the great scope of their pride.
For now there were rebellious stars in
the nightly array across the sky. And
that fierce trouble showed in the eyes
and the grimly lined faces of the em-

perors who had been defied.

The last portrait of all was the por-
trait of Juille’s father.

She stood in silence, looking up at the
young emperor in the niche, and the old
emperor, arms folded on the platform
rail, leaned and looked down across a
gulf of many years and much hard-won
experience, into the face of a stranger.

“Yes,” the emperor said gravely, “I
was a fool too, then.”

“It was a fool’s work to let them live,”
Juille told him hotly. “You were a
great warrior in those days, father.
Maybe the greatest the Galaxy ever had.
I wish I’d known you then. But you
weren’t great enough. It takes a great
man to be ruthless.”

The emperor looked at her under the
shadow of his brows. “I had a hard
problem then,” he said, " — the same
problem yotf’re facing now. If I’d
chosen the solution you’re choosing, you
probably wouldn’t be here today. As a
matter of fact, you might be sitting in a
cave somewhere, gnawing a half-cooked
bone.”

Juille gave him a bright violet glare.
“I’d have wiped them out,” she declared
furiously, “if it meant the end of the
empire. T d have killed every creature
with a drop of H’vani blood, and razed
every building on every world they had,
and sown the rocks with radium! I’d
have left their whole dead system hang-
ing in the sky as a warning for all time
to come. I’ll do it yet — by the Hundred
Emperors, I will!”

"The Ancients permitting, maybe you
will, child.” The old emperor stared
down into his own young face in the
niche. “And maybe you won’t. The
time may come when you’re old enough
to realize what warfare on that scale
would mean, even to the victors. And
there’d be no victors after a fight like
that.”

“But father, we’ll have to fight. Any
day — any hour — ”

“Not yet awhile, I think. The bal-
ance is still too even. They have the
outer fringes with all their resources, but

JUDGMENT NIGHT

we . . . well, we have Erieon and that
counts for a lot. More than the men
and machines we have. More than all
the loyal worlds. Nobody knows how
many dynasties there were before ours,
but everyone knows that the race on
Erieon rules the Galaxy.”

“As long as they hold Erieon. But
sooner or later the balance is going to tip
and they'll attack us. We'll have to
fight.”

“We’ll have to compromise.”

“We could cut our throats and be
done with it."

“That's what I'm trying to prevent.
How much of civilization do you think
would survive any such holocaust as
that? It would mean our ruin even if
we won. Come up- here, child.”

Juille gave him a searching, sidewise
glance and then turned slowly, hooking
her thumbs into her sword belt, and
mounted the shallow steps to the dais.
Here in orderly array were the worlds
of her father’s empire, stretching in a
long row left and right along the plat-
form. She watched a little sulkily as the
emperor laid a possessive hand upon the
great green globe of Erieon in the cen-
ter of the row and set it whirling be-
neath his fingers. The jewels that
marked its cities flashed and blurred.

“This is the empire, Juille,” he said.
“This one world. And the empire means
a great deal more than — well, a row of
conquered planets. It means mercy and
justice and peace.” He shook his head
unhappily. “I can't administer all that
any more to every world in the Galaxy.
But I won’t throw the loyal worlds
after the ones we’ve lost if any word of
mine can prevent it.” He let his hand
fall from the spinning globe. Its turning
slowed, and the jeweled cities flashed
and faded and twinkled over the curved
surface. “After all,” the old man said,
“isn’t peace as we’ve known it worth — ”

“No,” said Juille flatly. Her father
looked at her in heavy silence. “I can
do that to Erieon,” she told him, and
with a slap of her hand set the big globe

spinning again, until all the glittering
cities blurred upon its sides. “As long
as I can, the empire is ours. I won’t
share it with those hairy savages!"

The emperor was silent, looking at her
from under his brows.

After a slightly uncomfortable pause,
the girl turned away.

"I'm leaving," she said briefly.

“Where?”

“Off-world."

“Juille—"

“Nothing rash, father, I promise. I’ll
be back in time for the council. And I’ll
have a majority vote, too. You'll see
the worlds agree with me.” Her voice
softened. “We’ve got to fight, father.
Everyone says so but you. Nothing any-
one can do will prevent it now.”

Looking down, her father saw on the
girl's face a look he knew very well — the
terrible pride of a human who has tasted
the attributes of divinity, who rules the
turning worlds and the very stars in
their courses. He knew she would not
relent. He knew she could not. There
were dark days ahead that he could not
alter.

And he wondered with sudden self-
doubt if after all, in her frightening cer-
tainty. she might be right.

Juille strode down the hallway that
led to her living quarters, her spurs ring-
ing with faint rhythmic music and the
scabbard of her fire sword slapping
against her thigh.

There had been many tremendous
changes in the Lyonese culture even in
her own lifetime, but perhaps none
greater than the one which made it pos-
sible for her to take the part a son might
have taken, had the emperor produced a
son. Women for the past several gen-
erations had been turning more and
more to men's professions, but Juille
did not think of herself as filling a
prince's shoes, playing a substitute role
because no man of the proper heritage
was available. In her the cool, unswerv-
ing principles of the amazon had fallen
upon fertile ground, and she knew her-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

self better fitted and better trained for
the part she played than any man was
likely to be.

Juille had earned her military dress
as a man might have earned it, through
lifelong training in warfare. To her
mind, indeed, a woman was much more
suited to uniform than a man, so easily
can she throw off all hampering civilian
ideas once she gives her full loyalty to a
cause. She can discard virtues as well
as vices and live faithfully by a new set
of laws in which ruthless devotion to
duty leads all the rest.

For those women who still clung to
the old standards, Juille felt a sort of
tolerant contempt. But they made her
uneasy, too. They lived their own lives,
full of subtle nuances she had never let
herself recognize until lately. Particu-
larly, their relationship with men. More
and more often of late, she had been
wondering about certain aspects of life
that her training had made her miss.
The sureness and the subtlety with
which other women behaved in matters
not associated with war or politics both
annoyed and fascinated Juille. She was,
after all, a woman, and the uniform can
be discarded as well as donned. Whether
the state of mind can be discarded, too
— what lay beneath that — was a matter
that had been goading her for a long
while. And now it had goaded her to
action.

In her own rooms she gave an ab-
stracted glance to the several women
who hurried forward at her entrance,
said briefly, "Out. And "send me Helia,”
and then leaned to the mirror and stood
there peering with solemn intentness at
her own face under the shining helmet.
It was a sexless face, arrogant and in-
tolerant, handsome as her fluted helmet
was handsome, with the same delicately
fine details and well-turned curves. The
face and the helmet belonged together.

She saw a figure move shadowily in
the doorway reflected beyond her shoul-
der, and said without moving, “Helia — -
how will I look in dresses ? Would you
say I’m pretty?”

“You certainly aren't ugly, highness,”
Helia told her gruffly. It was as much
of a compliment as she had ever ex-
tracted from the amazon ex-warrior who
had been Juille’s childhood nurse and
girlhood tutor in the arts of war. She
had a seamed face, scarred from com-
bat in the revolution zones, and the twin-
kling narrow eyes of a race so old that
Juille’s by comparison seemed to lack a
history. Helia was an Andarean. The
tide of conquest had swept over the
Galaxy and ebbed again since the day of
Helia’s race and its forgotten glory.
Perhaps somewhere under the founda-
tions of the Lyonese cities today lay
rubble-filled courses the Andareans had
once built upon the ruins of cities yet
older. No one remembered now, except
perhaps the Ancients.

Juille sighed.

‘Til never find out from you,” she
said.

"You’ll get an answer on Cyrille,
highness, and you may not like it.”

Juille squared her shoulders. “I hope
you’ve kept your mouth shut about all
this. Is the ship ready?”

“It is. And I haven’t told a soul.
But what your father would say, high-
ness, if he knew you were going to a
notorious resort like Cyrille — ”

“Perfectly respectable people go there,
and you know it. Anyhow, I’m going
incognito. And if I hear another word
about it I’ll have you whipped.”

Helia’s lipless mouth compressed in
disapproval.

“Incognitos don’t always work, high-
ness. You should know how secrets
leak out around a palace.” She caught
a dangerous violet glance and subsided,
muttering. She knew that stubborn
look upon Juille’s fine, hard features.
But she knew the dangers upon Cyrille,
too. She said, “You’re taking me with
you, I hope?”

“One more word and I won’t,” Juille
warned her. “One more word !” She
straightened from the mirror, after one
last curiously appraising glance. "Come
along, if you want to. I’m leaving,”

JUDGMENT NIGHT

At the door a small, smoothly furred
creature rippled past Juille’s ankles with
an ingratiating murmur and looked up
out of enormous eyes. Juille stooped to
let it climb upon her shoulder, where it
sat balancing easily and staring about it
with the grave animal dignity and the
look of completely spurious benignity
and wisdom that distinguishes all liar.
Very few on Ericon own such pets.
They were perhaps the true aborigines
of Ericon themselves, for they had lived
here, and upon no other world, from
time immemorial, reserved little crea-
tures of fastidious habits and touchy,
aloof ways.

“I'll take both of you,” Juille said.
“And I expect you’ll be just about
equally in the way. Come on.”

Their ship spiraled up through the
rainy gray air of Ericon, leaving the
green mountains farther and farther be-
low' with each wide circle, until the sur-
face of the planet looked like undulating
green fur, soft with Erison’s eternal
summer. Presently they w'ere above the
high clouds, and rain ceased to beat
softly against the glass.

The little ship was riding a strictly
prescribed course. The sternest of the
Ancients’ few restrictions upon human
life on Ericon was the restriction on air
traffic. All passage w r as forbidden over
the great forests in which the living gods
dwelt. The Galaxy's vast space liners
had of their own weight to establish an
orbit and transact all direct business
through tenders, but tenders and private
ships plying Ericon’s forbidden airways
complied with rigid rules about height
and course. Because of them, Ericon
was a world of surface traffic except in
the rarest instances.

Juille sent her vessel flying along an
invisible airway of strict boundaries.
Presently they overtook twilight and
plunged into the evening air that was
darkening over the night side of the
world. A great luminous bubble floated
in the dark ahead, too large for a star,
too small for a moon, rolling along its ■

course around Ericon. Helia scowled
at it.

This little pleasure world swinging
opalescent upon its orbit housed the
tangible distillation of all pleasure which
a hundred emperors had made possible
in the Galaxy. No human desire, how-
ever fantastic, went unfulfilled upon
Cyrille so long as the client paid for his
fantasy. It is an unhappy commentary
upon human desires that the reputation
of such a place must inevitably be bad.

Juille’s ship hovered up below the
shining curve of the bubble and a dark
square opened in the curve. Then lux-
ury reached out in the form of a tractor
beam to take all navigation out of her
hands. They rose with smooth speed
through a shaft of darkness.

Because privacy and anonymity
were prerequisites of many patrons here,
they saw no one and were seen by none.
The ship came to a velvety stop; Juille
opened its door and stepped out straight
into a cubicle of a room whose walls
glowed in a rosy bath of indirect sun-
light. Low couches made a deeply up-
holstered ledge all around the room..
There was a luminous panel beside a
closed door. Otherwise — nothing.

Helia, climbing out disapprovingly.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,
highness,” she said. For answer, Juille
stepped to the luminous panel and let
her shadow' fall across it. Instantly a
voice of inhuman sweetness said dul-
cetly :

“Your pleasure?”

“I will have,” Juille said in a musing
tone, “a lounge with sunlight and an
ocean view' — no particular planet — and
a bedroom that — Oh, something rest-
ful and ingenuous. Use your own ideas
on that. A water bath with the em-
phasis on coolness and refreshment.
Now' let me see the public rooms for to-
day.”

“Immediately,” the dulcet voice cooed.
“The suite will be ready in five minutes.
Refreshment ?”

“No food yet. What have you?”

A breath as soft and cool as a moun-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

tain breeze at dawn sighed instantly
through the room. It smelled faintly of
pine. Gravity lessened almost imper-
ceptibly underfoot, so that they seemed
to be blowing with the breeze, though
they did not move.

“Very nice,” Juille told the panel.
“Now, the public rooms?”

“The central hall will be a spring twi-
light on Egillir for the next twelve
hours,” the inhuman voice announced,
and in the panel, in miniature, appeared
a vast sphere of a room, the inside of a
luminous bubble whose walls were the
green translucence of ah evening in
spring, just dim enough to cloud the
vision. Up through the center of the
bubble sprang an enormous tree, its
great trunk gnarled and twisted. Around
the trunk wound a crystal staircase en-
twined with flowers. Men and women
moved leisurely up ahd down the steps
around the vast trunk.

Spraying out exquisitely through the
hollow of the sphere were the tree’s
branches, feathery -with leaves of pastel
confetti. And floating here and there
through the green twilight of the bubble,
or nested among the limbs, or drifting
idly about through the flowers and the
leaves of the vast tree, were crystal plat-
forms upon which diners sat embowered
in little arbors of confetti leaves like the
tree’s.

A soft breeze blew delicately through
the twilight, stirring the leaves, and the
softest possible music swelled and sank
upon the air.

“There is also,” the disembodied voice
went on as the vision faded, “dancing
upon the royal lake of the Dullai satel-
lite — ” And in the panel Juille saw cou-
ples gliding to stronger music across
what appeared to be the mirror-smooth
waters of a lake that reflected a moving
array of stars. She recognized the lake
and the lighted tiers of a city around it,
which she had visited on a political
mission once several years ago, on a
world far away across the Galaxy. The
panel blurred again.

“We have also,” continued the sugary

voice, “several interesting Variations of
motion available for public use just now.
A new swimming medium — ” Pause.
"An adaptation of musical riding — ”
Pause. “A concert in color and motion
which is highly recommended as — ”

"Never mind just now,” Juille inter-
rupted. “Send me your best dresser,
and let me have some of the Dullai moun-
tain music. I’ll try your flower scents,
too — something delicate. Keep it just
subsensual. I don’t want to be conscious
of the separate odors.”

Helia gave her mistress a piercing
look as the panel went blank. Juille
laughed.

“I did it well, didn’t I ? For one who
never visited the place before, anyhow.
I’ve been reading everything I could find
about it for a month. There— nice

music, isn’t it?”

The distinctive plaintive vibration of
Dullai music sheets began to shiver
softly through the room. On a world
far away in space, from a period three
generations ago, the sad, wailing echoes
rang. No living musicians could play
the flexible metal sheets now, but upon
Cyrille all things were available, at a
price.

"The rooms seem to be ready, high-
ness,” Helia remarked dryly.

Juille turned. A broad doorway had
opened in the wall, and beyond it was a
long, low room through which sunlight
poured softly. The floor gave under-
foot, firm and resilient. Furniture held
out upholstered arms in invitation to its
series of upholstered laps. Beyond a
row of circular windows which filled one
wall an ocean of incredible greenness
broke in foam upon colored rocks.

The bedroom was a limbo of dim,
mysterious blue twilight beyond a cir-
cular doorway veiled in what looked
like floating gauze. When Juille stepped
through she found it was a sort of cap-
tive fog instead, offering no resistance
to the touch.

The nameless designers of Cyrille had
outdone themselves upon the bedroom.

JUDGMENT NIGHT

For one thing, it appeared to have no

floor. A film of very faintly dim-blue
sparkles overlying a black void seemed
to be all that upheld the tread. A bed
like a cloud confined in ebony palings
floated apparently clear of the nonex-
istent floor. Overhead in a night sky
other clouds moved slowly and soporifi-
cally over the faces of dim stars. A

few exquisitely soft and firm chairs and
a chaise longue or two had a curious
tendency to drift slowly about the room
unless captured and sat upon.

There was a fog-veiled alcove that
glittered with mirrors, and beyond it a
bathroom through which a fountain of
perfumed water played musically and
continuously.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Helia’s astringent expression was elo-
quent of distaste as she followed her
mistress through the rooms. The pet
liar, clinging to her shoulder, turned
wide eyes about the apartment and mur-
mured now and then in meaningless
whispered syllables.

“Just what are your plans, highness ?”
Delia demanded when they had finished
the tour. Juille glanced at her crossly.

“Very simple. I’m going to spend a
few days enjoying myself. Is there
anything wrong with that? I’ll have
some new clothes and visit the public
rooms and see what it’s like to be an
ordinary women meeting ordinary
people.”

“If you were an ordinary woman,
there might still be something very
wrong with it, highness. But you aren’t.
You have enemies — ”

“No one knows I’m here. And don’t
look so grim. I didn’t come to experi-
ment with exotic, drugs ! Besides, I can
take care of myself. And it’s none of
your business, anyhow.”

“Everything you do is my business,
highness,” Delia said gruffly. “I have
no others.”

Elsewhere in Cyrille a young man in
a startling cloak sat at breakfast beside
broad windows that opened upon a fairy-
land of falling snow. The lushed, whis-
pering rush of it sounded through
opened casements, and now and then a
breath of chilly wind blew like a stimu-
lant through the warm room. The
young man was rubbing the curls of the
short, yellow beard that just clouded the
outlines of his jaw, and grinning rather
maliciously at his companion.

“I work too hard,” he said. "It may
be Juille of Ericon, and again, it may
not. All the same, I’m going to have
my vacation.”

“It’s time to stop playing, Egide,”
said the man across the table. He had
a tremendous voice, so deep and strong
that it boomed through the hush of the
falling snow and the glasses vibrated
on the table to its pitch. It was a voice

that seemed always held in check ; if he
were to let it out to full volume the
walls might come down, shaken to ruins
by those deep vibrations.

The man matched his voice. He wore
plain mail forged to turn a fire-sword’s
flame, and his hair and his short beard,
his brows and the angry eyes beneath
were all a ruddy bright color on the
very verge of reel. Red hair grew like
a heat haze over the rolling interlace
of muscles along his heavy forearms
folded upon the table, and like a heat
haze vitality seemed to radiate from his
bull bulk and blaze from his scarred,
belligerent face.

“I didn’t . . . acquire . . . you to be my
conscience, Jair,” the young man said
coldly. He hesitated a little over the
verb. Then, "Oh, well — maybe I did.”
He pushed back his chair and stood up,
the outrageous cloak swirling about him.
“I don’t really like this job.”

"You don’t?” The big red man
sounded puzzled. Egide gave him an
odd glance.

“Stop worrying about it. I’ll go.
What will she be like? Hatchet face,
nose like a sword — Will I have to kiss
her feet?”

Jair said seriously, “No, she’s incog-
nito.” The glasses rang again to the
depth in his voice.

Egide paused before the mirror, ad-
miring the sweep of cloak from his fine
breadth of shoulder. Alone he would
have seemed a big man himself ; beside
Jair he looked like a stripling. But no
one, seeing them together here, could
fail to sense a coldness and a curious
lack of assurance behind all Jair’s domi-
nant, deep-voiced masculinity. He
watched Egide with expressionless eyes.

The younger man hunched his shoul-
ders together. “Br-r-r! What a man
will go through to change the fate of
the Calaxy. Well, if I live through it
I’ll be back. Wait for me.”

“Will you kill her?”

“If I can.”

“It must be done. Would you rather
I did, later?”

JUDGMENT NIGHT

Egide gave him a dispassionate
glance. For a moment he said nothing.
Then —

“No ... no, she doesn’t deserve that.
We’ll see what she’s like. Unless it’s
very bad, I’ll spare her that and kill her
myself — gently.”

He turned to the door, his amazing
cloak swinging wide behind him. Jair
sat perfectly motionless, watching him
go.

Helia said, “This will be the dresser.”
A sustained musical note from the entry
preceded the amplified sweetness of the
familiar inhuman voice, and Juille turned
to tire door with considerable interest
to see what came next.

The best dress designer upon Cyrille
seemed to be a soft-voiced, willowy
woman with the pink skin and narrow,
bright eyes of a race that occupied three
planets circling a sun far across the
outskirts of the Galaxy. She exuded
impersonal deftness. One felt that she
saw no faces here, was aware of no
personalities. She came into the room
with smooth, silent aloofness, her eyes
lowered.

But she was not servile. In her own
way the woman was a great artist, and
commanded her due of respect.

The composition of the new gown
took place before the mirrored alcove
that opened from the bedroom. Helia,
her jaw set like a rock, stripped off the
smart military uniform which her mis-
tress was wearing, the spurred boots, the
weapons, the shining helmet. From be-
neath it a shower of dark-gold hair de-
scended. Juille stood impassive under
the measuring eyes of the newcomer,
her hair clouding upon her shoulders.

Now she was no longer the sexless
princeling of Lyonese. The steely
delicacy was about her still, and the
arrogance. But the long, fine limbs and
the disciplined curves of her body had
a look of waxen lifelessness as she stood
waiting between the new personality and
the old. She was aware of a certain
embarrassed resentment, suddenly, at

the step she was about to take. It was
humiliating to admit by that very step
that the despised femininity she had
repudiated all her life should be im-
portant enough to capture now.

The quality of impassivity seemed to
puzzle the artist, who stood looking at
her thoughtfully.

“Is there any definite effect to be
achieved?” she asked after a moment,
speaking in the faintly awkward third
person through which all employees
upon Cyrille address all patrons.

Juille swallowed a desire to answer
angrily that there was not. Her state
of mind confused even herself. This
was her first excursion into incognito,
her first conscious attempt to be — not
feminine. She scorned that term. She
had embraced the cult of the amazon too
wholeheartedly to admit even to herself
just what she wanted or hoped from this
experience. She could not answer the
dresser’s questions. She turned a
smoothly muscular shoulder to the
woman and said with resentfulness she
tried to conceal even from herself:

“Nothing . , . nothing. Use your own
ingenuity.”

The dresser mentally shot a keen
glance upward. She was far too well-
trained actually to look a patron in the
face, but she had seen the uniform this
one had discarded, she saw the hard,
smooth symmetry of her body and from
it understood enough of the unknown’s
background to guess what she wanted
and would not request. She would not
have worked her way up a long and
difficult career from an outlying planet
to the position of head designer on
Cyrille if she had lacked extremely sensi-
tive perception. She narrowed her
already narrow eyes and pursed specula-
tive lips. This patron would need care-
ful handling to persuade her to accept
what she really wanted.

“A thought came to me yesterday,”
she murmured in her soft, drawling
voice — she cultivated the slurred accent
of her native land — “while I watched the
dancers on the Dullai Lake. A dark

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

gown, full of shadows and stars. I need
a perfect body to compose it on, for
even the elastic paint of undergarments
might spoil my effect.” This was not
strictly true, but it served the purpose.
Juille could accept the gown now not as
romance personified, but as a tribute to
her own fine body.

“With permission, I shall compose
that gown,” the soft voice drawled, and
Juille nodded coldly.

The dresser laid both hands on a
section of wall near the alcove and slid
back a long panel to disclose her work-
ing apparatus. Juille stared in frank
enchantment and even Helia’s feminine
instincts, smothered behind a military
lifetime, made her eyes gleam as she
looked. The dresser’s equipment had
evidently been moved into place behind
the sliding panel just before her entrance,
for the tall rack at one end of the open-
ing still presented what must have been
the color-selection of the last patron.
Through a series of level slits the ends,
of almost countless fabrics in every con-
ceivable shade of pink showed untidily.
Shelves and drawers spilled more un-
tidiness. Obviously this artist was great
enough to indulge her whims even at
the expense of neatness.

She pressed a button now and the
pink rainbow slid sidewise and vanished.
Into its place snapped a panel exuding
ends of blackness in level parallels —
satin that gleamed like dark water, the
black smoke of gauzes, velvet so soft it
looked charred, like black ash.

The dresser moved so swiftly and
deftly that her work looked like child’s
play, or magic. She chose an end of
dull silk and reeled out yard after bil-
lowing yard through the slot, slashed it
off recklessly with a razor-sharp blade,
and like a sculptor modeling in clay,
molded the soft, thick stuff directly upon
Juille’s body, fitting it with quick, nerv-
ous snips of her scissors and sealing the
edges into one another. In less than a
minute Juille was sheathed from shoul-
der to ankle in a gown that fitted per-
fectly and elastically as her skin, out-

lining every curve of her body and fall-
ing in soft, rich folds about her feet.

The dresser kicked away the frag-
ments of discarded silk and was pulling
out now such clouds and billows of pure
shadow as seemed to engulf her in fog.
Juille almost gasped as the cloud de-
scended upon herself. It was something
too sheer for cloth, certainly not a woven
fabric. The dresser’s deft hands touched
lightly here and there, sealing the folds
of cloud in place. In a moment or two
she stepped back and gestured toward
the mirror.

Juille turned. This tall unknown was
certainly not herself. The hard, imper-
sonal, perfect body had suddenly taken
on soft, velvety curves beneath the thick
soft fabric. All about her, floating out
when she moved, the shadowy billows
of dimness smoked away in drapery so
adroitly composed that it seemed an ar-
rogance in itself.

“And now, one thing more,” smiled
the dresser, pulling open an untidy
drawer. “This — ” She brought out a
double handful of sequins like flashing
silver dust and strewed them lavishly
in the folds of floating gauze. “Turn,”
she said, and Juille was enchanted to
see the tiny star points cling magneti-
cally to the cloth except for a thin, fine
film of them that floated out behind her
and twinkled away to nothing in mid-
air whenever she moved.

Juille turned back to the mirror. For
a moment more this was a stranger
whose face looked back at her out of
shining violet eyes, a face with the
strength and delicacy of something
finely made of steel. It was arrogant,
intolerant, handsome as before, but the
arrogance seemed to spring now from
the knowledge of beauty.

And then she knew herself in the
mirror. Only the gown was strange,
and her familiar features looked incon-
gruous above it. For the first time in
her life Juille felt supremely unsure of
herself. Not even the knowledge that
the very stars in the Galaxy were subject
to her whim could help that feeling now.

JUDGMENT NIGHT

She drew a long breath and faced herself
in the glass resolutely.

The tiny elevator’s door slid back and
Juille stepped out alone upon a curve of
the crystal stairs which wound upward
around that enormous tree trunk in the
central room. For a moment she stood
still, clutching at the old arrogance to
sustain her here in this green spring
twilight through which perfume and
music and soft breezes blew in twisting
currents. In that moment all her un-
sureness came back with a rush — she
had no business here in these despised
feminine garments ; she belonged in hel-
met and uniform. If she walked, she
would stride as if in boots and rip these
delicate skirts. Everyone would look
up presently and recognize her standing
here, the warrior leader of the Lyonese
masquerading like a fool.

But no one seemed to be looking at all,
and that in itself was a humiliation.
Perhaps it was true that she was not
really pretty. That she did not belong
in soft silken gowns. That no man
would ever look at her except as a war-
rior and an heiress.

Juille squared her shoulders under
the cloud of mist and turned toward
her waiter, who had snapped the switch
of a cylinder fastened to the back of his
wrist and focused the invisible beam of
it upon an empty floating platform across
the great hollow. It drifted toward
them slowly, circling on repellor rays
around intervening objects. Then it
was brushing through the leaves of a
mighty bough above them, and Juille
took the waiter’s arm and stepped out
over green twilit space into the tiny
leafy arbor of the platform. She had ex-
pected it to tilt a little underfoot, but it
held as steady as if based upon a rock.

She sank into the elastic firmness of a
crystal chair, leaned both elbows upon
the crystal table and moodily ordered a
strong and treacherous drink. It came
almost instantly, sealed in an apricot-
tinted sphere of glass on a slender
pedestal, a glass drinking tube rising in

AST— 2X

a curve from the upper surface. The
whole sphere was lightly silvered with
frost.

“Shove me off,” she told the waiter,
and sipped the first heady draft of her
drink in mild defiance as the arbored
platform went drifting off among the
leaves. A vagrant current caught it
there and carried her slowly along in
a wide circle in and out of the branches,
past other platforms where couples sat
with heads close together with exotic
drinks. Juille felt very lonely and very
self-conscious.

On the curving stairs a young man in
a startling cloak looked after her
thoughtfully.

There were times, he told himself,
when even the most trustworthy of
secret informants made mistakes. He
thought this must be one of the times.
He had been waiting here for some
while, watching the crystal stairs pa-
tiently. But now — the amazonian prin-
cess of Ericon was a familiar figure to
him from her news-screen appearances,
and it was impossible to identify that
striding military creature with this
woman swathed in shadows, her gar-
ments breathing out stardust that drifted
and twinkled and faded behind her like
wafts of faint perfume as she moved.

The young man knew very well what
magic the dress designers of Cyrille
could work, but he could not believe
their magic wholly responsible for this.
He grinned a little and lifted his shoul-
ders imperceptibly under the remarkable
cloak. It would be amusing to find out.

He kept an eye upon the drifting plat-
form and mounted the stairway slowly,
keeping level with it.

Juille watched her drink go down in
the frosted sphere and was somewhat
ironically aware that her spirits were
rising to match it. The rigid self-
consciousness of her first few minutes
had relaxed ; the drink made her mind at
once cloudy and sparkling, a little like
the shadowy draperies she wore. This

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

was a delicious sensation, floating free
upon drifts of perfumed breeze while
music breathed and ebbed around her
in the green twilight.

She watched the other patrons drift-
ing by, half-seen among the confettilike
leaves of their bowers. Many of the
faces she thought she recognized. Cyrille
was not a world for the rank and file
of the Galaxy to enjoy. One had to
present stiff credentials to make reserva-
tions here, and by no means all of the
patrons came incognito. It was a place
to enjoy forbidden pleasures secretly, of
course, but equally a place to see and be
seen in. The wealthy and the noble of
all the Galaxy’s worlds took considerable
pride in showing off their elaborate cos-
tumes and the beauty of their com-
panions here, for the very fact of their
presence was as good as a published
statement of wealth and ancestry.

Presently a flash of scarlet seen
through the leaves of a passing platform
caught her eye. She remembered then
that she had noticed that same shocking
cloak upon a young man on the stairs.
It was a gannent so startling that she
felt more than a passing wonder about
the personality of the man who would
wear it. The garment had been deliber-
ately designed to look like a waterfall
of gushing blood, bright arterial scarlet
that rippled from the shoulders in a
cascading deluge, its colors constantly
moving and changing so that one in-
stinctively looked downward to see the
scarlet stream go pouring away behind
its wearer down the stairs.

Now the blood-red deluge moved fit-
fully -between the branches of a passing
arbor. The platform turned so that she
could see through the arch of the en-
trance, and for a long moment as they
moved lazily by one another she looked
into the interested face of a young man
with yellow curls and a short blond
beard. His eyes followed her all during
the leisurely passing of their platforms,
and Juille suddenly sparkled behind the
delicious languorous spell her drink had
laid upon her. This was it ! This was

what she had hoped for, and not quite
admitted even to herself.

A panel glowed into opaque life in
the center of the table she leaned upon.
The ubiquitous, inhumanly sweet voice
of Cyrille murmured:

“A young man in a red cloak has just
asked the privilege of speaking to the
occupant of this platform. His identity
is not revealed, but the occupant is as-
sured from our records that he is of
noble family and good reputation except
for a casual tendency toward philander-
ing of which the occupant is warned.
He is skilled in the military arts, knows
most forms of music well, enjoys athletic
games, has done some composing of
considerable merit. If the occupant
wishes further acquaintance, press the
left chair arm which will cut front re-
pellors.”

Juille almost giggled at the curious
blend of chaperonage, social report and
conversational guide with which the
honeyed voice prefaced an informal
meeting. She wondered if her own
anonymous record had been presented
to the man, and then decided that it
would not be, without her permission.

She wondered, too, just how another
woman in her place, with the background
she had usurped, would probably act.
After a moment of almost panicky hesi-
tation she laid a hand upon the chair
arm and leaned on it.

The other platform had evidently
made a wide circle around her while
the introduction was in progress. Now
it swung about in front of her arbor and
she could see that the red-cloaked man
was leaning on his own chair in a similar
position. Across the clear green gulf
he called in a pleasant voice :

“May I?”

Juille inclined her dark-gold head,
carefully coifed under the hooding veil.
The platforms drifted closer, touched
with the slightest possible jar. The
young man ducked under the arbor,
darkening the entrance with the swoop
of his bloody cloak. It billowed out

JUDGMENT NIGHT

behind him extravagantly in the little
wind upon which the platforms drifted.

Juille was glowing with sudden con-
fidence. Now she had achieved part of
what she set out to do. Surely this
proved her capable of competing with
other women on their own unstable,
mysterious ground. The magic of the
shadowy gown she wore had a part in
it, and the drink she had almost finished
added its dangerous warmth.

After all, humanity was a strange role
to Juille, not one to maintain long. The
subservient planets had wheeled across
the heavens for her imperial family too
long. That look of intolerable pride
was coming back subtly into her deli-
cate, steely face beneath the veil that
drew its shadow across Iter eyes.

She nodded the newcomer to a crystal
chair across front her, studying him
coolly from under the cobwebby veil.
He was smiling at her out of very blue
eyes, his teeth flashing in the short curly
beard. He looked foppish, but he was
a big young man, and she noticed that
the cloak of running blood swung from
very fine shoulders indeed. She felt a
faint contempt for him — music, compos-
ing, when the man had shoulders like
that ! Lolling here in that outrageous
cape, his Iteard combed to the last care-
ful curl, oblivious to the holocaust that
was rising all through the Galaxy.

She had a moment’s vision of that
holocaust breaking upon Cyrille, as it
was sure to break very soon even this
close to the sacred world of Ericon.
She thought of H’vani bombs crashing
through this twilight sphere in which
she floated. She saw the vast tree trunk
crumbling on its foundation, crashing
down in ruins, its great arms combing
all these drifting crystal bowers out of
the green perfumed air. She thought
of the power failing, the lights going out,
the cries of the suddenly stricken echo-
ing among the shattered Edens. She
saw the darkness of outer space with
cold stars twinkling, and the vast lumin-
ous bulk of Ericon looming up outside

through the riven walls of Cyrille.

The young man did not appear to
share any such premonitions of dis-
aster. He sank into the chair she had
indicated and stretched his long legs out
comfortably. He had set down on the
table a crystal inhaler shaped like a long
flattened pitcher with its lip closed ex-
cept for a tiny slit. Blue-green liquid
inside swung gently to the motion of the
platform.

He smiled at Juille very charmingly.
In spite of herself she warmed to him
a little. The charm was potent ; though
she scorned it, she could not wholly re-
sist returning the smile.

“This is Cyrille at its best,” he said,
and gestured toward the twilit hush
through which their transparent islet
was floating in a long, ascending spiral.
The gesture came back to include the
bower’s intimacy. “Maybe,” he said
reflectively, “the best I’ve ever known.”

Juille gave him a remote glance under
the veil.

"The best dream,” he explained se-
riously. “That’s what we come for, isn't
it? Except that what we get here is
much nicer than most dreams. You,
for instance.” The charming smile
again, both repelling and attracting her.
“If this were a dream, I might wake up
any moment. But as it is — ”

He stared at her for an instant in
silence, while a little breeze rustled the
leaves about them and green space swam
underfoot below the transparent floor.

“You might be a princess,” he went
on in a voice of deliberate musing. “Or
something made up out of synthetics by
some magic or other — I’ve heard of such
things on Cyrille. Maybe you have no
voice. Maybe you’re just made to sit
there and smile and look beautiful. Is
it too much to hope you’re alive, too —
not an android?”

Juille said to herself, “This young
man is much too glib, and he certainly
enjoys the sound of his own voice. But
then, I enjoy it, too — ”

Aloud she said nothing, but she smiled
and inclined her head a little, so that

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

from the disturbed veil a mist of frosty
lights floated out and twinkled into noth-
ingness in the bowery gloom.

The young man stared at her, half
enchanted by his own fancy, half con-
vinced in spite of himself that she might
after all be one of the fabulous androids
of Cvrille, endowed with a compelling
charm stronger ' than the charm of
humans.

“If you were," he went on. “if you
were born yesterday out of a riiatrix
just to sit there and be beautiful. I won-
der what we’d talk about?”

Juille decided it was time to speak.
Site made her voice remote and low,
and said through the sparkling shadows
of her veil :

“We'd talk about the worlds you know
. . . you would tell me what it’s like
outside C’yrille.”

He smiled at her delightedly. “They
gave you a beautiful voice! But I’d
rather show you the worlds than talk
about them. What would you like to
see ?”

“Which do you like best?’ -

Kgide lifted his crystal inhaler and
put its slitted lip to his mouth, tilting
out a few drops of the blue-green liquid
within. Then he closed his eyes and let
the liquor volatile upon his tongue and
go expanding and rising all through his
head in dizzying sweetness. He was
wondering if he would have to kill this
beautiful, low-voiced creature, and if so.
whether he would strangle Iter or use
a knife, or whether the little gun tucked
inside his belt would be safest. He said :

“I’ve never been sure of that. You’ll
have to help me decide. If we find one
beautiful enough. T’ll take you there to-
night." He leaned forward above the
panel in the table top and spoke into it
briefly. “Now watch," he said.

Juille leaned across the table, folding
her arms upon its cool surface. The
veil settled about her in slow, cloudy
shadows, little lights sparkling among
them. With their heads close together
they watched pictures form and hover
briefly and fade in the panel.

Their islet floated mit in a long arc
over the abysses of spring evening, and
followed a vagrant air current back
through the branches again, while they
reviewed world after changing world.

“Do you know,” said Egide, “that
we’re doing what only the emperor of
Ericon could do?” file watched Juille’s
dim reflection in the table top. and saw
her expression change sharply. He
smiled. Yes, she was probably — herself.
He went on, “We’re making the worlds
parade for our amusement. I’ll be em-
peror and give you the one you choose.
Which shall it be?"

Juille was hesitating between laughter
and outraged divinity. Did the lesser
races really talk like this among them-
selves, with disrespect even for the em-
peror of the Galaxy? She did not know.
She had no way of guessing. She could
only swallow the unintended sacrilege
and pretend to play his impious little
game.

“There," she said in a moment, point-
ing a tapered forefinger, "give me that
city.”

“Yorgana is yours," he told her, with
a regal gesture that made his cloak sweep
out in a sudden gush of blood. And he
spoke again into the panel. The great
swinging branches began to drift more
swiftly by them as their platform picked
up motion toward the giant tree trunk
and the stairs.

Juille was accustomed to a certain
amount of informality from her officers
and advisers. She had never insisted
upon the full rendition of her imperial
rights, which in some cases bordered
almost upon semidivinity. But she
knew now for the first time that no one
had ever been really at ease in her pres-
ence before.

Half a dozen times as they went up
the stairs and entered a fancifully drop-
shaped elevator she was on the verge of
laughter or outraged dignity, or both
together, at the young man’s attitude
toward her. No one before had ever
pretended even in jest. to bestow largesse
upon her; no one had ever assumed the

JUDGMENT NIGHT

Initiative as a matter of course and told
her what she was expected to do next.
For the moment Juille was amused, but
only, she drought, for the moment.

The real Yorgana had been in ruins a
thousand years. Here in Cyrille, under
the light of its three moons, it lay magi-
cally restored once more, a lovely city
of canals and glimmering waterways in
a night made bright as some strange-
colored day by its circling moons.

They walked along the sand-paved
streets, strolled over the bridges, dropped
pebbles into the rippling reflections of
the canals. And they talked with a cer-
tain stiffness of reserve which began to
wear off imperceptibly after a while.
Their range of subject matter was lim-
ited, for her companion appeared as
determined to preserve his incognito as
Juille was herself. So they talked of
Cyrille instead, and of the many strange
things it housed. They talked of the
libraries of Cyrille, v r here the music of
all recorded times lay stored, and of the
strange pastime of musical levitation
which was currently popular here. They
speculated about the nationalities, the
world origins, the rank of their fellow
strollers through the oddly ghostlike
city of Yorgana. They talked of the
dark places of Cyrille, where beauty and
terror were blended for the delectation
of those who loved nightmares. But
they did not talk of one another except
guardedly, and any speculation on either
side was never spoken aloud,

Juille was surprised at her own rather
breathless enjoyment of this evening.
They shared a little table on a terrace
that overhung the spangled heights of
the city, and they drank pungent deep-
red wine, and Juille sat silently, watch-
ing the three moons of Yorgana reflect-
ing in tiny focus in her glass while Egide
said outrageously flattering things to
her.

They drifted in a boat shaped like a
new moon along the winding canals
under balconies hung with dark flowers,
and Egide sang cloyingly sweet ballads,

and the night was theatrically lovely.
Once he leaned toward her, making the
boat rock a little, and hesitated for what
seemed a very long moment, while Juille
tensed herself to repel whatever ad-
vances he was about to make. She knew
so little of matters like this, but she
knew by instinct that this was too soon.
She was both relieved and sorry when
he sank back with a deep sigh, saying
nothing.

Except for that one incident, insig-
nificant as it was, Juille had no reason
at all to distrust the man. But as the
evening went on she found that she did
distrust him. There was no logic about
it. His ingratiating charm struck re-
sponsive chords in her against her own
desire, but the distrust went deeper still.
It was not any telepathic awareness of
his surface thoughts, but an awareness
of the man himself as his casual opinions
revealed him. He was, she thought, too
soft. His height and his easy muscular
poise had nothing to do with it. She
had felt gun callouses on his palm when
he helped her into the boat, and she
knew he was not wholly the careless fop
he pretended, but too many of his casual
words tonight had betrayed him. He
reminded her more than once of all she
disliked most in her father’s attitude.
She thought, before the evening ended,
that she knew this young man better
than he suspected, and she did not trust
him. But she found his facile charm
curiously disturbing.

The disturbance reached its height at
the end of the evening, when they danced
upon the starry black mirror of the
Dullai Lake, where lessened gravity let
them move with lovely long gliding steps
to the strains of music which seemed to
swoon extravagantly from chord to lin-
gering chord. Juille was delightfully
coriscious of her gown’s effect here, in
the very scene that had inspired the de-
signer to create it. She was part of the
dark, drifting shadows ; the clouds of
dim gauze billowed out behind her,
astream with vanishing stars. And the
dance itself was perfection. They were

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

both surprised at the intoxicating
rhythm with which their bodies moved
together ; it was like dancing in a dream
of weightless flight, buoyed up on the
rise and flow of music.

In this one thing they lost them-
selves. Neither was on guard against
the other while the music carried them
along, swirling them around and around
in slow, lovely spirals over the starry
floor. They said nothing. They did not
even think. Time had suspended itself,
and space was a starry void through
which they moved in perfect, responsive
rhythm to music that was an intoxicant
more potent than wine. They had known
one another forever. In this light em-
brace a single mind controlled them and
they moved to a single rhythm. Apart,
their thoughts were antagonists, but in
this moment all thoughts had ceased and
their bodies seemed one flesh. When
the music circled intricately to its close,
the}- danced out the last lingering echoes
and came reluctantly to a halt, looking
at one another in a stilled, mindless en-
chantment, all barriers let down, like
people awakening from a dream and
drenched still with the dream’s impos-
sible sweetness.

They stood in a little tree-shadowed
cove on the lake shore, dark water rip-
pling in illusion beneath their feet. They
were quite alone here. The music
seemed to have lifted from the surface
of the lake and breathed above their
heads through the stirring leaves. And
Jnille was suddenly aware that Egide
had tensed all over and was looking
down at her with a queer intentness.
Light through the trees caught in his
eyes and gave them an alarming bright-
ness. He reached for her in the dark-
ness, and there was something so grimly
purposeful about the gesture that she
took a step backward, wary and poised.
I f he had intended a kiss, there was still
something frightening in his face and
the brilliance of his eyes.

Perhaps even Egide had not been sure
just what he intended. But after a mo-
ment of intense silence while they stood

in arrested motion, staring at one an-
other, he let his arms fall and stepped
back, sighing again with a deep, exhal-
ing breath as he had sighed in the boat.

Juille knew then that it was time to
leave.

When she came out into her own
quiet apartments, sunlight still gleamed
changelessly upon the sea beyond her
windows. It was not really night, of
course. Arbitrary day and night are not
observed upon Cyrille, so that though
individuals come and go the crowd re-
mains fairly constant in the public rooms.
Helia looked up and gave Juille a quick,
keen stare as she went through the
sunny room without a word.

She stepped through blue mist into
the shadowy bedroom, walking upon a
mist of twinkling lights through its dim-
ness. A delicious weariness was ex-
panding along her limbs, and her mind
felt cloudy like the cloudy, inviting bed.
Deep under the lassitude a reasonless
unease about that last moment on the
lake stirred in her mind, but she would
not follow the thought through.

She was looking back with lazy amuse-
ment upon the incredible romance of
their hours together, and seeing now,
without annoyance, how deftly her coin-
panion had induced the mood which
drowned her now, against her own will
and judgment, submerging even the
strange, chilly remembrance of the mo-
ment after the dance.

Deliberately he had led her through
scene after scene of the most forthright
and outrageous romanticism, moonlight
and starlight, flowers and rippling
streams, songs of incredibly honeyed im-
port. She felt vaguely that if the ro-
mance had been stressed a little less
blatantly it might have been laughable,
but the sheer cumulative weight of it
had bludgeoned her senses into accepting
at its full, false value all the cloying
sweetness of the scenes. Toward the
end, she thought, he had overreached
himself. Whatever his original inten-
tion had been, whatever hers, in that one

JUDGMENT NIGHT

timeless, intoxicating dance they had
been caught in the same honeyed trap.

And afterward, when he reached for
her with that frightening purpose and
the frightening brilliance in his eyes —
well, what was so alarming about a kiss?
Surely it had been foolish to read any-
thing more menacing into the gesture.
She would see him again, and she would
know then.

Juille realized suddenly that she had
been standing quite still in the middle
of the room for a long while, staring
blindly at the slowly drifting chairs, re-
viewing the dance over and over, and
the dissolving sweetness of the music
and the rhythms of their motion.

She said, “Damn the man !’’ in a clear
voice, and yawned extravagantly, and
stepped through another veil of fog into
the showering bath. The shadowy gown
she had worn all evening melted upon
her and went sluicing away under the
Hashing water. She was both glad and
sorry to see it go.

Her dreams in the cloudy bed were
lovely and disturbing.

“We’ve known one another three
days,” Juille said, “and 1 may as well
tell you I don’t like you. Wouldn’t trust
you out of my sight, either. Why I
stay on here — ”

“It’s my entertainment value,” Egide
told her, and then rubbed the cropped
curls of his beard in a thoughtful way.
“Trust I don’t expect. But liking, now
— you surprise me. Is it the short time
we’ve known each other?”

“Hand me a sandwich,” Julie said.
He pushed the picnic basket toward her
over a billowing surface of clouds —
curious, she thought, how the cloud
motif had haunted her days here — and
remarked :

“I can manage the time angle if that’s
all that bothers you. Wait.” He took
up a luminous disk lying beside him and
murmured into it. After a moment the
clear sunlight that bathed them began
to mellow to an afternoon richness.

They were lunching in shameless.

childlike fantasy upon a cloud that
drifted across the face of a nameless
planet. Any pleasure that the mind can
devise the body may enjoy in Cyrille.
Its arts can expand the walls of a room
so that sunlit space seems to reach out
toward infinity all around. From the
cumulus billows they rode upon to-
day they could lean to watch the shadow
of their cloud moving over the soft-
green contours of the turning world
below, very far down. For the pres-
ent all gravity and all logic had re-
leased them, and in this simple fulfill-
ment of the dream every child knows,
Juille let all her past float away.
And she had sensed in her companion
a similar release. He had been almost
irresistibly charming in these careless
days, as if, like her. he had deliberately
shed all responsibilities and all remem-
brance of past duties, and had interest
now only in being charming and being
with her. . The three days had affected
them both. Juille found she could sit
here now and listen to her companion’s
nonsense with very little recollection that
she had been and must be again the
princess of Ericon. There was no
shadow over the present. She would
not look beyond it.

She could even accept without much
disbelief the fantastic thing Egide was
accomplishing now, and when he said.
“Look — not even the emperor could do
this !” no shadow crossed her face. He
was not watching for such signals now.
He had no need to.

Over the world below them evening
had begun to move. The air dimmed,
and the great soft billows of their cloud
flushed pink above the darkening land
below. A star broke out in the sky,
and another. It was night, full of flam-
ing constellations in the velvet dark.
And then dawn began to glow beyond
a distant mountain range. The air spar-
kled ; dew was bright upon the face of
the turning world.

“See?” said Egide. “Tomorrow!”

Juille smiled at him indulgently,
watching the morning move swiftly

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

across the planet. He made no move
to halt its progress and the shadows
lengthened fast below them as the day
declined once more. A fabulous sunset
enveloped them in purple and pink and
gold, and the sky was green, and violet,
and then velvet black. The cycle re-
peated itself, faster and faster. Evening
and night and dawn, noon, evening
again.

When a week of evanescent days had
flashed over them, Egide spoke into the
disk and the circling progress slowed
down to normal. He grinned at her.

“Now you’ve known me about ten
days,” he said. “Don’t I improve with

acquaintance? Do you feel you know
me any better?”

“I’ve aged too fast to tell.” She
smiled. “What fun it is, being a god.”
She rose on an elbow and looked down
over the edge of the cloud. “Let there
lie cities down there,” she said, and
waved a careless arm along which bright
blue water appeared to ripple, breaking
into a foam of bubbles about the wrist.

“Cities there are.” Egide snapped
his fingers and over the horizon a twin-
kle of lights began to lift. “Shall we
have evening, to watch them shine?”
Juille nodded, and the air dimmed about
them once more. She held up a blue-

JUDGMENT NIGHT

sheathed arm to watch the light fading
along the liquid surfaces of her sleeve.

They had sailed yesterday under lean-
ing white canvas over a windy sea, and
Egide had sent the dress designer to
Juille this morning with a new idea. So
today she wore a gown of changing blues
and greens that flowed like sea water
as his cloak had once flowed like blood.
An immaculate foam of bubbles rippled
about her feet.

Almost every waking hour of the past
three days they had spent together. And
Juille had almost forgotten that once,
on their first meeting, some look about
him had frightened her. In her sight
the look was not repeated. Behind her
back — perhaps. But the three days had
been unshadowed, full of laughter and
light talk and the entertainment Cyrille
alone knew how to provide. They still
had no names for one another, but re-
strain had long gone from their con-
versation. Juille had even let her first
mistrust of him sink into temporary
abeyance, so that only occasionally some
passing word of his evoked it again.

Just now something else evoked it.
At any other place and time there would
probably have been real annoyance in
her voice, but she spoke today with
gentle lassitude.

"You have a decadent mind,” she
told him. “I’ve often noticed that.
Look — even your clothes show it.”

Egide glanced down with a certain
complacence. To all appearance he
was cloaked today in long blond hair
that rippled rather horribly from his
shoulders. Beneath it his fine muscular
body was sheathed in wetly shining blue
satin the exact color of his eyes, and
of the same translucent texture.

“Oh, there’s a lot I haven’t tried yet,”
he assured her. “Rain, fire — By the
way, how would you like a rainstorm
over your cities?”

Juille dismissed her shadow of dis-
taste and leaned upon one elbow, peer-
ing down.

“Not now. Look. How pretty they
are !”

Dusk was purpling over the world be-
low, and the cities twinkled in great
spangled clusters of light that shook
enchantingly all over the face of the
darkening planet as the air quivered and
danced between them.

“Look up,” murmured Egide, his
voice hushed a little in the growing hush
of their synthetic night. “I wonder if
the stars really look like that, anywhere
in the Galaxy.”

There were great shining rosettes of
light, shimmering from red to blue to
white again in patternless rhythms
against a sky of thick black velvet. And
as they leaned back upon the cloud to
watch, a very distant music began to
breathe above them among the stars.

It made Juille think of the music upon
the lake to which they had danced so
beautifully, and in a moment she knew
she must sit up and say something to
break the gathering magic in the air.
She did not trust that magic. She had
been careful not to let another moment
like the moment of the dance engulf
them. She mistrusted it both for its
own sake and for the sake of what bar-
riers it might let down in her. The
thought of Egide’s embrace was fright-
ening, in some obscure, illogical way she
did not try to fathom. In just a moment
she would break the gathering spell.

The music sank slowly toward them in
intangible festoons o£ sweetness. The
stars blazed like great fiery roses against
the dark. They were floating through
space upon that most lulling and deeply
remembered of all motions — the gentle
swing of the cradle. Their cloud rocked
them above the turning world and the
stars poured down enchantment. And
now it was too late to speak.

The same dissolving magic was upon
them as their cloud went drifting slowly
among the stars. All reality was drain-
ing away. Juille heard the long breath
her companion drew, and saw the stars
blotted out by the silhouette of his curly
head and broad cloaked shoulders lean-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ing above her. And suddenly, something
about their tensed outline roused Juille
from her lovely lassitude. She sat up
abruptly, terror flashing over her. In
this swimming darkness his face and
the brilliance of his eyes was veiled, but
she could see his arms reach out for her
and all the latent fear came back with
a rush.

But before she could move he had
her. His strength was surprising. He
held her struggles quiet in one arm, and
she felt the calloused palm of the other
hand fitting itself gently about her
throat. For one unreasoning moment,
in the face of all logic, she knew what
he intended. In her mind she could
already feel that hand tightening with
its terrible gentleness until the night
swam red around her as she strangled.
If this was murder, she must forestall
it, and her body knew the way. What
she did was pure instinct, unguided by
reason. She relaxed in his arms with a
little sigh, letting her eyes close softly.
When she felt his grip begin to loosen
just a bit she got one arm free and laid
it about his neck.

What happened then must have
amazed them both if their minds had
been capable of surprise. But their
minds were not functioning now. As in
the moment of the dance, all antagonisms
of thought had ceased without warning,
and it was the flesh instead that governed
and responded. Juille felt one dim warn-
ing stir far back in her brain, drowned
beneath the immediate and urgent de-
light of his expert kisses, but she would
not think of it now. She could not.
Later, perhaps, she would remember.
Much later. Not now.

The burning stars had paled a little
when she noticed them again. Some
warm, light fabric covered her — that
cloak of rippling yellow hair. Her head
was pillowed upon the cutnulous couch
and dawn was beginning to freshen the
air, though no light yet glowed above
the horizon. She could see her com-
panion darkly silhouetted against the
stars as he sat upon a billow of cloud a

little distance away, resting his chin on
his fist and staring downward.

Juille pushed the clouds into a sup-
port behind her and leaned upon it,
watching him, formless thoughts swirl-
ing in her mind. Presently his head
turned toward her. In this warm dark-
ness his face was barely visible, lighted
by the dimming stars. She could see
starlight reflecting in the mirrory sur-
faces of his tunic and glancing down,
she caught the same reflections broken
among the water ripples of her own
skirt.

They looked at one another in silence,
for a long while.

Juille woke in the dimness of her
apartment, upon her bed of cloud, and
lay for a few moments letting the fog
of her dreams clear slowly away, like
mist dispelling. Then she sat up ab-
ruptly, knowing that after all it had been
no dream. But when she looked back
upon the bewildering complexity of
what had happened on the cloud, she
saw no rhyme or reason to it. The
dimness was suddenly smothering about
her.

“Light, light!” she called pettishly,
brushing at the room’s darkness with
both hands, as if she could clear it
away like a curtain. And someone wait-
ing beyond the call panel of the bed
must have heard — it was strange to
wonder how much those listeners heard
and watched and . knew — for the dark-
ness paled and a rosy glow of morning
flooded the room.

Helia stood in the doorway, the little
liar preening itself upon her shoulder.
Her weathered face showed no emotion,
but there was a certain gentleness in the
look she bent upon her mistress.

“Did I sleep long?” Juille asked.

Helia nodded. The liar unclasped its
flexible pads and plucked at her dark
hair, beginning very swiftly and deftly
to braid it between quick, multiple fin-
gers like the fingers of sea-anemones.
Helia stroked the little animal and it
snapped sidewise with razory teeth and

JUDGMENT NIGHT

sprang to the floor with one fluid motion
of grace like flight.

“Any calls?’'

“Not yet, highness,” Helia’s grave
stare was almost disconcerting.

Juille said, ‘‘Go away,” and then sat
clasping her knees and frowning. In
the mirrors of the dressing alcove she
could see herself, the fine, hard delicacy
of her face looking chill even in this rosy
light. She felt chill.

What had happened last night was
too complex to understand. Would
his hand have tightened about her
throat if she had not taken the one
way to prevent it? Or was the heavy
touch a caress? What possible reason,
she w'ondered, could the man have for
wanting to strangle her? But if he had
meant to, and if he had let her seduce
him from his purpose — why, that was
no more than she might have expected
from him. The old mistrust, the old
dislike, came back in a flood. His de-
cadent clothes betrayed him, she thought,
and his sensitive, sensuous mouth be-
trayed him, and the careless opinions
he had expressed too often. He was a
man who would always make exceptions ;
he would always be pulled two ways
between sentiment and duty. If it had
not really happened last night, then it
would happen when the first test came.
No, she did not respect him at all —
but a dangerous weakness loosened all
her muscles as she leaned here remem-
bering that stunning of the senses which
Cyrille’s false glamour could work upon
her.

Everything about her was an illusion,
she realized with sudden cold insight
that no Cyrillian art could dispel. But
it was an illusion so dangerous that the
very integrity of the mind could be en-
chanted by it, the keen edge of reason
dulled. And she felt frightened as no
possible physical threat could frighten
her. When the amazon discards a
woman’s gentleness of body and mind
she is almost certain to make the discard
complete. Juille thought she was not
asking too much of an intellectual equal

when she expected from him the same
cold, unswerving devotion to a principle
that was the foundation of her own life.
Egide would never have it.

But she knew she had better not see
that disarming face of his any more.
Not even to solve for herself the per-
plexing question of his intention last
night. Better to let it slide. Better to
go now and forget everything that had
happened upon the drifting cloud, be-
neath those burning stars. Now she
knew the shifting, unstable ground upon
which women walk ; she would not tread
it gain. She sat up.

“Helia,” she called through the fog-
veiled doorway. “Helia, send for our
ship. We’re starting back to Ericon —
now.”

Egide sat clasping one knee, leaning
his head back on the window frame and
looking out over a field of pale flowers
that nodded in the rays of tricolored
suns. He did not look at Jair. His
cloak today was a mantle of licking
flame.

“Well?” said Jair, the boom in his
voice under close control. No answer.
Jair looked down reflectively at his own
clasped hands. He tightened them,
watching the great muscles writhe along
his forearms under the red-heat haze
of hair. “Has she recognized you?” he
asked.

Egide picked up the glass beside him
and spun it thoughtfully. Rainbows
flickered across the floor as sunlight
struck it. He did not answer for a mo-
ment. Then he said in a detached voice,
"That. It’s a false alarm, Jair.”

“A false alarm !” Jair’s voice made
the glass shiver in Egide’s hand. The
muscles crawled spectacularly along his
arms as his great fists clenched. "She
isn’t the emperor’s daughter?”

Egide flashed him a clear, blue glance,
and grinned.

“Never mind,” he said. “You don’t
have to impress me.”

There was a certain blankness in Jair’s
reddish gaze that Egide recognized with

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

an odd, illogical shiver. He said,
“Sometimes I forget how good you are
at your job, Jair. And sometimes it sur-
prises me—”

“You mean,” Jair said, and even in
restraint his voice made the glass vibrate,
“we've wasted all this time and
money — ”

“Well, no, I wouldn’t call it wasted.
I’ve had a very pleasant time. But we’d
better leave today. It wasn’t the em-
peror’s daughter."

Rain danced from the high curve of
the crystal wall and went streaming in
long, irregular freshets down the sides
of the glass room, veiling. Ericon’s soft-
green hills outside. Within, firelight
wavered beneath a great white mantel-
piece carved with the mythological loves
of logs and goddesses worshiped a long
time ago by another race.

The rain and the firelight and the
silence of the people in the room should
have made it a peaceful hour here under
the high glass curve of the walls. But
over the mantelpiece was a communi-
cator panel that was like an open window
upon death ancl disaster. Ever}- man in
the room leaned forward tensely in his
chair, eyes upon the haggard, blood-
streaked face that spoke to them hoarsely
through the panel.

The voice carried over long-lapsed
time and the unfathomable dark dis-
tances that stretch between worlds. The
man who called was probably dead now :
he spoke from another planet that cir-
cled far outside the orbit of Ericon.

“Dunnar has just surrendered to the
H’vani,” he was telling them in a tired,
emotionless voice that sounded as if it
had been shouting a little while ago,
though it was not shouting now. “We
hadn't a chance. They came down in
one wave after another all around the
planet, bombing everything that moved.
They landed troops on the night side and
kept raining them down all around the
world as the dark belt moved on. The
day side got the bombing heaviest, be-
ginning in the dawn belt and moving

on around with the planet. They had
their own men planted everywhere, ready
to rise. Smothered our antiaircraft
from the ground. Much of it must have
been manned by their spies. Some of
our interceptor- craft were shot down
deliberately from below. Watch out for
H’vani men planted — ”

Behind the speaker a flaming rafter
fell into the range of the communicator
screen and crashed somewhere near, out
of sight. The man glanced back at it.
then leaned to the screen and spoke on
in a voice of quickened urgency. Above
the crackling of the flames, other voices
shouted in the background, coming
nearer. There was the noise of what
might be gunfire, and another sliding
crash as more beams fell. The speaker
was shouting now. his voice almost
drowned out in the rising uproar of
Dunnars destruction.

“The weapon — ” he called above the
crashing. “No chance for us . . . came
too fast — We’ve smuggled out one
man . . . fast ship . . . bringing a model
to you. Watch for him. They’ll fol-
low — ” A blazing beam came down be-
tween his face and the screen. Through
a thin curtain of fire he mouthed at them
some last urgent message of which only
a word or two came through. “Weapon
. . . might save the Galaxy . . . give
them a blast for Dunnar — ” And then
the fire blazed up to blot out face and
voice alike, and Dunnar’s ruined image
faded from the screen.

For a moment after it was gone, the
warm firelight flickering through the
room seemed horrible, a parody of the
flames that had engulfed the spokesman
in the panel. The crash of burning Dun-
nar still echoed through the quiet, and
the hoarse, despairing voice of the last
man. Then the emperor said in a flat-
tened tone,

“I wanted you all to hear it a second
time, before we go out to meet the ship.”

Juille uncrossed her long bare legs
and leaned forward, scowling under the
crown of dark-gold braids.

“We’re ready for them,” she said

JUDGMENT NIGHT

grimly. “That weapon wasn’t quite
finished, though.”

“That’s why they struck when they
did,” murmured an amazon officer be-
side her. “Beautiful timing — beautiful !
Almost a split-second attack, between
the finish of the weapon and the mount-
ing of it.”

There was silence in the room. The
opening blow had been struck of a battle
that must engulf every world in the
Galaxy before it ended. No one spoke
for a while, but the air was heavy with
unvoiced thoughts and most of them
were grim.

The emperor put out a hand to the
game set up on a table before him and
moved a bead along a curve of colored
wire. It was a game of interplanetary
warfare, played like chess, though the
men moved both vertically and hori-
zontally on wires like an abacus. Fire-
light glinted on the colored beads carved
like ships and worlds.

“You’ll lose your master planet un-
less you bring up the blues,” Juille told
him absently.

“This is a solitaire game,” said the
emperor. “Mind your own business.”

The rain blew pattering against the
glass and the fire crackled softly. Juil-
le’s liar came out from beneath her chair,
stretching elaborately, yawning to show
a curved pink tongue. The crackling of
the logs was a whisper of the terrible
roaring crackle they had heard across
the void from Dunnar’s collapsing cities.
They would hear it again from other
worlds before the holocaust ended that
had begun almost before their eyes here.
Perhaps they might listen to it in this
very room, on the sacred soil of Ericon
itself. Other dynasties had crumbled
upon Ericon before theirs.

“Why don’t they report again on that
ship?” the emperor said irritably, flip-
ping a carved bead around a curve with
too much foixe. Juille, seeing its course,
automatically opened her mouth to ob-
ject, and closed it again without saying
anything. The liar swung itself up on
the emperor’s table with soundless ease

and put out its webby-fingered paw to
move two beads precisely along the
notched wire.

“Ah, so you know Thori’s Gambit,
little friend ?” The emperor’s tired face
creased in a smile as the liar’s round-
eyed stare met his through the maze of
painted wires. He moved a translucent
red bead between the two the liar had
shifted. “I wish I could be sure that
was an accident. How much does a liar
really know?”

The little animal put its head down,
rolled up its strange, shining eyes and
wriggled all over, like a playful kitten.
But when the emperor stretched out a
hand to stroke it, the liar turned deftly
away and flowed down over the table
edge onto the floor with a grace that was
almost frightening in its boneless ease.

The screen glowed above the fireplace.
Everyone looked up, even the liar. An
expressionless face announced in ex-
pressionless tones:

“Escaping Dunnar ship approaching
landing field from space. Three enemy
pursuit ships have succeeded in passing
the Ericon space guard and still sur-
vive.”

The emperor got up stiffly. “Come
along,” he said. “We’ll watch.”

They came out in a window-walled
room above the landing field. A fine
mist blew in through the openings, sweet
with the fragrance of the wet green hills
beyond. The clean smell of wet con-
crete rose from the broad, brown ex-
panse below, where the small figures of
attendants dashed about excitedly in
preparation for the landing.

One inner wall of the room was a
screen upon which they could all see now
what had been taking place overhead,
above the layers of rain cloud. The
emperor sat down without taking his
eyes from the screen. Juille crossed her
arms on the high back of his chair and
watching, too, ringing one spur in a half-
unconscious, continuing jingle. Every-
one else was silent, standing respectfully

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

back, and the sound of breathing was
loud in the quiet.

On the screen they could see how the
tiny black ship from Dunnar had cut its
rockets and hurled itself headlong into
the gravitational embrace of Ericon,
swinging around the planet to subdue
the speed it had not dared slacken in
space. Behind it, still in suicidal pur-
suit, the three H’vani ships flamed on.
They had escaped the space guard only
because of their smallness and mobility,
which meant that the range of their
weapons was too limited to do much
damage at a distance. But they were
cutting down the space between them
and their quarry, and the race was close.

“But they’ll have to turn back now,”
breathed Juille, gripping the chair-back.
“They won’t dare . . . look, there go our
interceptors.”

The screen divided itself in half with
an oddly amoebalike motion, one section
showing the swift rise of Ericon’s inter-
ceptors while the other mirrored the
orbit of the newcomer as it swung
around the Control Planet still at dan-
gerous speed. It was curious to think
of the plunge into circumscribed space
time which that ship was just now mak-
ing as it emerged from deep space where
neither time nor distance have real
meaning. The fugitive had flashed
through morning and noon and night,
and come around the world into dawn
again, and so into the misty forenoon
above the watchers.

Now they saw it put out wings upon
the thin upper air, like a diver suddenly
stretching out his arms, and come coast-
ing down upon their sustaining surfaces
in a great sweeping spiral above the
field.

“There goes one of ’em,” the emperor
said in a satisfied voice. Juille glanced
hack at the upper screen and saw one of
the pursuers from space twisting down-
ward, its black sides beginning to glow
already from the friction of that thin
high air. It dropped incandescently out
of the picture, which was following the
other two ships in their headlong flight.

Their own sheer speed gave them an ad-
vantage. They were drawing away from
the interceptors, taking full and suici-
dal advantage of the fact that upon
Ericon immutable law forbids any air-
craft to fly at will over the surface of
the sacred planet.

“They won’t dare — ” Juille told her-
self under her breath, leaning forward.
Behind her a rustle and an indrawn
breath all through the room spoke the
same thought. For the enemy ships,
winged now and swinging down through
the heavier air in pursuit of their escap-
ing prey, were being driven farther and
farther off the prescribed course beyond
which all air traffic is forbidden.

The interceptor ships were sheering
away. Juille could picture the frantic
indecision of their commanders, torn be-
tween the necessity to destroy the in-
vaders and the still more urgent neces-
sity not to transgress an immemorial law-
laid down by powers even higher than
the Galactic emperor's.

In the lower half of the screen, the
single-w-inged ship had leveled off for a
landing. Someone outside shouted, and
for a moment all eyes turned to the win-
dows and the broad concrete field out-
side.

Down out of the misty clouds came a
duplicate of the shape upon the screen.
In silence, the black-winged ship came
swooping through the rain, lower and
low-er over the heads of running attend-
ants. It hovered to a halt and sank
down gently upon its own reflection in
the wet concrete. And upon the screen
behind them, the same scene took place
in faithful duplicate.

Indeed, the image was more faithful
than the reality, for at this distance the
naked eye could see only a swarming of
tiny figures around the newly arrived
ship. The emperor called, “Closer,"
and turned back to the screen.

The scene below- rushed into a close-up
upon the wall, swooping toward them
with dizzy speed. Now- they could
watch the opening slide into view upon

JUDGMENT NIGHT

the ship’s side, and the man who ducked
out and stepped down upon the brown
concrete in the drizzle of misting rain.
It beaded his shoulders with moisture in
the first few moments. He blinked the
rain out of his eyes and looked about
calmly, not in the least hurried or
alarmed.

The envoy from Dunnar was an as-
tonishing figure, so tall and so very thin
that at first glance he looked like a
scarecrow shape beside his vessel. But
when he turned to face the crowding
attendants and the screen, he moved
with a grace and sureness that had
something unmistakably regal about it.
He wore his plain black overall with a
remarkable sort of elegance, and his own
quiet sureness seemed to throw every-
one else on the field out of focus. The
muscular attendants looked squat and
brutish by contrast with his scarecrow
height ; the well-dressed officials moving
forward to receive him were vulgar be-
side his overalled simplicity.

He looked up into the featureless
clouds where his pursuers and his de-
fenders still waged an invisible battle.
All around him the crowding men looked
up, too, futilely. Only in the control
room, where the emperor and his staff
sat, did the eyes that followed that lifted
gaze see what was happening overhead.

And now, as their gaze went back to
the neglected drama above, a horrified
fascination seized upon every watcher in
the room. Even Juille’s unconsciously
jingling spur was silent. She felt the
sudden clutch of small fingery paws,
but she did not glance down as the liar
came swarming up her leg to a vantage
point upon her shoulder. She felt its
tiny, quick breathing against her cheek
as it, too, stared.

Not within the memory of any living
man had the law of the Ancients been
violated which forbade air traffic over
Ericon. Obedience to those laws had
been rooted as deeply as obedience to the
law of gravity. There were violations,
of course; tradition said all such viola-
tors died instantly.

Juille watched the first such episode
in modern times with a catch in her
breath and her throat closed from tre-
mendous excitement. She wondered if
everyone else in the room felt the same
half-guilty anticipation, the impious
wonder.

For there was a wide gap now be-
tween the enemy ships and the Ericon
interceptors. It had been a suicide pur-
suit anyhow, for the H’vani. They were
certainly doomed. And they were tak-
ing one last headlong chance in the hope
of destroying their quarry before they
were themselves destroyed. The inter-
ceptors had forced them by now far out
of the narrow traffic lane whose invisible
boundaries should have been so rigid.
For the first time in living memory,
ships spread their wings upon the for-
bidden air of Ericon.

They were swooping down in a long
dive now, coming fast through the clouds
toward the landing field where the new-
comer stood unconcernedly staring up
into the mists that hid them.

“They’re going to make it — they
are !” Juille whispered to herself, grip-
ping the chair-back with aching fingers.

Out on the landing field, crews were
manning the antiaircraft guns in frantic
haste, sheer incredulity numbing their
fingers as they worked. No one had
ever quite believed that these guns could
be needed. They were meant for de-
fense against ships attacking from
directly overhead, in the prescribed land-
ing lane from space. Even that possi-
bility had seemed absurd. But now —

“Get that fool off the field !” the em-
peror roared suddenly, making everyone
jump. “Get him off! They’ll be here
in a minute. Look at them come !”

Down through the mist the two sur-
viving ships came driving through air
that shrieked away from their wings.
Men were scattering wildly from the
field. Loud-speakers roared at the Dun-
narian to take shelter. He stood imper-
turbably, tall and thin and quiet, looking
up into the clouds.

And for a timeless moment a faith

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION .

rooted millenniums deep in human
minds shook terribly as the Ancients
were defied — and stayed their hand. No
peril to the defenseless envoy on the
field — though he carried a secret that
might save their race — moved the watch-
ers half so deeply as what they were see-
ing now. The ships dived on through
the screaming air, and behind them
clouds boiled furiously in the vortex of
their passage.

Did the Ancients really exist at all?
Or had all those legends been legends
only? The breath of every watcher
paused in his throat as lie waited the
answer.

But no one saw the vengeance the
Ancients took. All over the planet
shaken watchers followed the action
upon their screens — but no human eye
saw the blow fall.

One moment, the black ships were
screaming down through grayness : the
next instant, without warning, there
came a soundless flash like the flash of
sunlight glancing from some colossal
mirror, blinding every eye that watched.

There was no sound. The riven air
screamed itself quiet. When those who
stared could see again out of dazzled
eves, nothing remained but the vortex
of clouds split by the plunging ships.
And even the vortex was quieting now.
Of the ships, nothing remained. For
the first time in living memory, the
Ancients had struck, invisibly before a
world of watchers, in the deadly dignity
of silence.

And all over Ericon, a world-wide
sigh of relief went up wordlessly.

Tn the utter quiet, the envoy moved
forward at last across the wet concrete.
Overhead, diat vast boiling of clouds
had cleared a space for the rare blue
sky to shine. The reflecting pavement
turned suddenly blue and glorious as he
stalked across it with his long scarecrow
stride. Awed eyes watched him come,
a black figure moving with strange,
smooth elegance over the blinding blue-
ness of the sky's reflection.

“Stop that jingling and come along,
Juille." the emperor said at last in the
silence, rising as stiffly as he had sat
down. “We’ll see him in my library,
alone. Wake up. girl ! Come along.”

“ — And the weapon ?" said the em-
peror eagerly, leaning forward between
the arms of a great carved chair before
his library fire.

No one could have guessed from the
look of the man before him that he had
come straight from a desperate flight
and an awesome rescue, or that he car-
ried a cargo so precious a whole Galaxy's
fate might depend on it. He was the
last Dunnarian left to speak for his
ruined world, hut no emotion at all
showed upon his cool, impassive face.

“I’ll want my men to look over the
weapon at once." the emperor went on.
“It’s in your ship?”

“Flightless. 1 brought no weapon.”

“No weapon !”

Juille watched a familiar thunderous
look gather upon her father’s face, but
the storm did not quite break and Juille
smiled to herself, understanding why.
It was difficult to treat this man like an
ordinary person. His appearance was
extraordinary enough, without that
recollection of an hour ago which had
struck a whole world into reverent
silence.

This was the man who had stood un-
afraid beneath the plunge of the enemy
ships, unprotected, so confident in the
power of the Ancients that he had not
wavered even when death seemed cer-
tain. This was the man above whom the
Ancients had for the first time in living
memory put ou. their hands and wrought
a miracle. Fie had, of course, been only
the occasion, certainly not the cause.
But he was haloed still in the reflected
glory of that moment which was already
taking its place in legend.

“I have no weapon,” he said again,
meeting the emperor's glare with an im-
perturbable gaze from his great, lumb
nous eyes that never winked. “We
dared not risk letting a model fall info

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

H'vani hands, highness. I will have to
make one for you.”

Juille saw her father settle, back, mol-
lified, perhaps a bit relieved that he
need not thunder at this remarkable and
disconcerting man. Perhaps it had
occurred to the emperor, as it had to
Juille, that immortality which might
outlast their own had already descended
upon the envoy’s smooth, narrow-skulled
head. Unborn generations would re-
peat in awe the story of his experience
today.

She stared frankly at the man, won-
dering very much from what ancient
line he sprang and what knowledge lay
behind the strange, thin face with its
falcon nose and its large, transparent
gray eyes and the mouth that looked at
once cruel and oversensitive. Seen this
near, he seemed even taller and thinner
and more oddly scarecrowlike than on
the screen, yet the extraordinary, fas-
tidious precision of his motion made
every other man alive seem crude and
clumsy. He had an ageless face, and a
poise that seemed bred into the very
genes of his ancestors. Juille had a
glancing, vivid recollection of Cvrille —
for a moment she was drifting on a cloud
again, and a young man cloaked in
flowing yellow curls bending above her
— and she thought wryly how much he
would have envied this Dunnarian's un-
studied elegance. Even the stained
overall, thus worn, looked like some
fashion a Galactic prince had just set
for the capitals of the worlds to copy.

“You’ll have to get to work immedi-
ately,” the emperor’s voice recalled her
to the urgent present. “We must have
a model of the weapon at once. Too bad
the H’vani timed their attack so well.
In a few days more you might have
fought them off with it, eh?”

The Dunnarian shook his narrow,
bird-shaped head gravely.

“Our men never succeeded in ex-
panding the scope of the weapon that
much, highness. It remains a weapon
for the individual, against the individual,
but within that scope I believe it’s the

most effective thing ever made.”

“A delayed-action killing, isn’t it?’
Juille said.

The luminous eyes turned to her.
There was an infinite quietness in their
stare, curiously at odds with the man’s
words.

“It is. highness. That gives it a
strong psychological threat value, as
well as a physical one. With every other
comparable weapon, its operator has to
sight and fire while the enemy is ex-
posed to view. With the new one, a
man may be killed not only at any dis-
tance, but at any time, once its sight has
been fixed upon him. A sort of photo-
graph of the victim’s brain pattern is
snapped, and he is doomed from that
moment, though you may not choose to
pull the trigger for many days. Within
certain limits the weapon remains fo-
cused upon him, figuratively speaking,
until it is discharged. He will l>e un-
able to travel far enough to escape it.
and no hiding place can'save him.”
“Like a fuse," Juille murmured. “An
invisible fuse, long enough to follow him
wherever he goes, and you can light it
when you choose. Oh. very nice! It’s
easily portable, 1 suppose?”

“The weapon itself is a bulky machine
which must be set up in some impreg-
nable position, perhaps sealed in against
possible bombardment. But the focus-
ing instrument is a small double lens in
a frame. It has a slightly telescoj tic-
property. Once a man is centered in
the cross hairs and a trigger sprung,
he’s your victim whenever you spring
the second trigger on the lens and touch
off his particular pattern in the central
machine.”

The emperor put his fingertips to-
gether and stared at them, shaking his
head.

“It's a treacherous thing.” he said.
“The ultimate refinement of a stab in
the back, eh? I suppose the victim can't
tell if he’s been spotted ?”

“Probably the victim never does
know, highness. Death is almost in-
stantaneous.”

JUDGMENT NIGHT

The emperor shook his head again.
"Personally,” he said, "I don’t like it.
But I can see why the H’vani wiped out
a world trying to get it away from us.
As you say, the psychological value of
the thing is tremendous, once they know
what they’re up against.”

Juille laughed, a short, triumphant
sound. “I like it,” she said. “I’m not
squeamish. Think of it, father! We
can send armed spies into their bases to
snap their leaders, and wait until the
height of battle to pick them off. Imag-
ine the effect during some complicated
maneuver if all the leaders fell dead
simultaneously ! And that’s saying
nothing of how the leaders themselves
will feel, knowing they’re walking dead
men, doomed the moment they step into
a responsible position and start giving
orders. Oh, I do like it !”

Her father nodded, frowning. “Once
it’s known,” he said, “once it’s actually
proved in combat, I should think every
H'vani officer with any responsibility
would become either a reckless fatalist
or a nervous wreck. It isn’t so bad to
be killed outright — every soldier knows
that can happen, and there’s an end of
it. But to know the assassin will strike
inevitably at the high point of your re-
sponsibility, when thousands of lives
depend on yours and the whole outcome
of a battle may hinge on what you do —
This ought to cause the most profound
psychological reactions all along the line
in any army the weapon’s used against.”

Juille took a short turn about the
room, spurs tinkling, and came back
with shining violet eyes.

“Do you know what we’ve got here ?”
she demanded. “It’s something so new
it almost frightens me. Not just the
weapon — but the principle behind it.
It’s the only new thing, really, since cave-
men led off the procession of warfare
with the bow and arrow. From that
time forward, weapons have been in-
creasing in range and scope and volume.
The whole story of military warfare’s
been a seesaw between defense and of-

fense — new method of attack, new de-
, fense against it, stalemate, then a newer
weapon that kills more people quicker.
But now-—” She laughed exultantly.
“Don’t you see? This is a complete
rightabout-face. Ever since the begin-
ning of time, all martial invention's been
forging ahead in one direction only, to-
ward bigger and bigger weapons with
greater range and scope. Men’s minds
are trained to think in those terms only.
But with this new thing, we’re flashing
back in the other direction entirely,
turning their flank, smashing them in a
vulnerable spot left absolutely unpro-
tected all this while. Their minds won’t
even be able to cope with it or devise a
defense. People just don't think in
terms like that.”

The emperor looked at her thought-
fully, stroking his beard. The envoy’s
great, translucent eyes dwelt upon her
animated face with an impersonal re-
moteness.

“See it?” Juille demanded. “Now we
can strike them where they least expect
it. We’re back at the very beginning,
even before the sword or the club. It’s
the individual we attack now. This is a
weapon as terrible as anything that
wipes out cities, but aimed at the other
end of the scale of offense — the indi-
vidual himself. Each man alone, in per-
sonal danger of a doom that’s picked him
out from all the rest and will follow him
wherever he goes. This attacks the
mind as well as the body. It’s like a
germ of terror that can eat a man’s
morale out. and leave his body intact.
He won’t trust himself or his leader.
And do you know the only possible de-
fense?”

She struck her hands together and
her voice almost crowed with triumph.

“Individual responsibility. The
breakup of an integrated war machine.
No one can depend on anyone else for
anything, once our weapon’s in action.
They'll have to throw out all their elabo-
rate maneuvers and all their training
and start again from scratch. Each man
for himself. An army of guerrillas. Ut-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

terly reckless, of course, fatalistic to the
last degree. But I don’t see how they
can hope to conduct space warfare with
every man in the army independent of
every other man. It’ll win the war for
us, father!”

The emperor drummed his fingers on
the table. “You may be right,” he con-
ceded. “If we can keep it for ourselves,
that is. But if anyone stole it — ”

“Who else knows how to build the
machine?” Juille demanded of the Dun-
narian.

“No one, highness. There were few of
us at the beginning, and I saw all my co-
workers die. The knowledge is quite
safe so far, with us.”

Juille bent upon him a curiously cold,
violet stare. The grave, gray eyes met it
without a flicker, though he must have
known what passed through her mind.
Artisans who create the unique for jeal-
ous emperors are notoriously short-
lived, and in this case the need for
uniqueness went far beyond petty jeal-
ousy.

“You’ll want a constant guard,” Juille
told the man thoughtfully. “And you'll
have to work fast.”

The Dunnarian bowed silently as the
emperor waved a dismissing hand. He
looked more than ever falconlike for a
moment, and as he turned his head and
Juille saw the narrow skull and the
beaked nose outlined, she wondered how
he could seem so birdlike and yet so
smoothly poised, for birds are creatures
of small, nervous motions.

Then she remembered that before the
bird came the snake. It was the snake
behind the falcon that epitomized this
man’s smooth gestures, his elegance, his
quiet, lidless stare.

In another part of the palace a figure
slipped quietly and unseen out of a cur-
tained window. He dropped to the dark
grass of a garden and, moving with the
sureness of one who has come this way
many times before, went out through an
unguarded postern and through a baud
of trees dripping with rain that flashed

in the lights behind him.

Quickly and silently through the rus-
tling silence of the night he moved away,
leaving the turmoil of the palace behind
him, where news of the ruin of world
after world flamed across the luminous
screens that pictured their destruction.

He went disdainfully through the
dark, picking his way with delicate steps.
He knew the path so well that no one
challenged him, no one saw the dark
figure slipping from shadow to shadow.
He had a long way to go, but he knew
every step of it, even in the dark.

He was tired when he came to the far
end of the journey, for it had been a long
way to come on foot. In the end it was
intricate, too, because he had to enter by
a hidden way.

But the end was reward enough for
all his weariness and secrecy, as he had
known it would be. Indeed, he knew
and loved each step of the path because
it brought him nearer this goal. He
stood in a dark archway at the end of
the journey, and looked out over the low
rooftops of the city of his people, glitter-
ing with warm, soft lights through cur-
tained windows. No two curtains were
of quite the same shade, nor were the
windows shaped alike at all, so that the
city glowed with myriad flowery shapes,
like a lighted garden. His heart swelled
with the knowledge that he was at home
again, that the city was his and he the
city's. He no longer moved stealthily as
he went down the slope of sand toward
the sandy streets before him.

There were few abroad at this hour,
but those he passed knew him and ex-
changed with him the reserved formula
of greeting behind which lay a deep,
sure affection between individuals for
the sake of the group itself — a feeling
almost indescribable to anyone unfa-
miliar with such a community as this.

He went along the sand-padded street
silently, straight for the house where his
friends awaited him. Reserve was
strongly rooted in them all, and their
meeting betrayed no emotional unbal-
ance, but common purpose and common

JUDGMENT NIGHT

danger had welded them into a group
so close and strong that words were
scarcely necessary among them.

Still, when he was refreshed and re-
laxed, he could not help voicing the
dominant emotion which had harried
him all the way here.

“1 wish it were over!” he sighed. “I
left them listening to the news of their
own destruction, and making noises
about it. Ericon will be a better world
when the last of them dies.”

‘‘A better place for us, I hope,” one
of the others said. “Will it be soon?”
“I think so, don’t you? I think
they're finished now, if they only knew
it.”

“They stand at a very definite crisis,”
said someone else, and glanced around
the group with grave, affectionate eyes.
“They can still save themselves — per-
haps. There’s time for it, if they only
knew the way. Such a simple way, too.
Some of them see it, but I don’t think
they’ll have the chance to try.”

“They’re doomed,” the newcomer de-
clared in his soft voice. “I know them
too well. Poor ignorant, blundering
creatures.” He hesitated. “I almost
feel pity sometimes, watching them.
But they’ve had their turn, and the
sooner they finish the better. We’ve
waited so long — ”

"Would you help them if you could?”
asked someone.

"If it weren’t for us — perhaps. At
heart they mean well. But they’re mud-
dled beyond all hope now, and I can’t
believe anything could straighten them
out. Think how long we’ve waited — ”
“Think of Their promise,” murmured
a voice in the background.

“It wasn’t a flat promise, remember,”
someone else warned cautiously. “It
was contingent, you know. They
haven’t failed yet. If this war turns in
the right direction, they still have their
chance, and we may have to begin our
waiting all over again.”

"They’ll miss the chance,” the new-
comer said, half exultantly and half in
reluctant pity. “I know them too well.”

The officers’ lounge in one of die
tower tops was roofed and walled in
glass, against which gusts of storming
rain beat fitfully now, out of a purple
sky. Ericon is so much a world of rain
that all its architecture is designed to
take advantage of rain's beaut)', much
like solariums on other worlds.

Today the lounge was crowded, and
there was a murmur of grave under-
tones beneath the voice of the news
screen that filled one wall. It rolled out
the toll of ruined cities and silenced
worlds. All over the Galaxy, insurrec-
tion was spreading inward toward Eri-
con like a plague from the rotting fringes
of the empire. The imperial cities were
going down like ninepins on world after
crashing world.

“They’re slowing up a bit, though.”
Juille said thoughtfully. "You know, I
believe they had to strike sooner than
they meant to, because of that weapon
from Dunnar.” She nodded at the en-
voy from that now voiceless planet, who
sat in a deep chair beside her, long legs
crossed, long fingertips interlaced, his
lidless stare upon the screen that covered
one wall of the room. Unobtrusively
his bodyguard leaned upon the wall be-
hind him.

Around them sat Juille’s staff of offi-
cers, most of them young, many of them
women, who among them divided most
of the power of the empire today. Helia
leaned across the back of her chair, the
liar on her shoulder preening its sleek
sides with hands like ftngery starfish.

“You’re right about that, highness,”
remarked a grim-faced woman in a
plumed helmet. "They’re definitely
slowing down. But the best we can
hope for now, I think, is the striking of
some balance. We can fall into a dead-
lock— -beyond that we can’t hope to pass
just now.”

“There are worse things than dead-
locks,” Juille told her. “Wait till the
weapon’s finished ! But if my father’s
conference this afternoon comes to any-
thing — ” She slapped the chair arm?

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

angrily. “If it should. I think the whole
Galaxy's lost.’’

“The emperor, highness, would call it
lost if the conference fails." The man
from Dttnnar turned his grave, luminous
eyes upon her.

"I won't sit down to a peace confer-
ence with those bloody savages," Juille
declared fiercely. “Why they ever
agreed to a conference I can’t under-
stand. but there’s something behind it
we won't like. As for me, I wouldn’t
offer them peace if they held a knife at
ni}' throat, and now — when we really
hold a knife to theirs, if they only knew
it — ” She gave an angry shrug and did
not finish.

"Do you feel there's any hope of their
accepting the emperor's terms?"

Juille scowled. “It depends on how
intelligent they are. I’d have called them
utter savages, unable to see beyond the
next battle, if they hadn't planned this
invasion of the inner systems so well.
And just now, of course, they do have
the upper hand. They took us by sur-
prise. But we’re finding our balance
and beginning to strike back. They may
realize they’ve struck a little too soon.
Maybe they can see ahead to the time
when we’ll reach that deadlock — and
then the new weapon may very well turn
the balance to our side.” She shook her
head fretfully, so that the windows
gleamed in reflection upon her shining
helmet. “I don’t know. It worries me
that they came at all. Since they did.
it's just possible they might agree to a
treaty. Yes, I might almost say I think
there's some danger of their agreeing to
peace."

“You consider it a danger, highness?"

"The greatest the empire has to face.
I say crush them utterly, whatever it
costs us. I'd rather inherit a bankrupt
empire, when my turn comes, then live
on side by side with those murderous
savages, giving them our arts and
sciences, letting them think themselves
our equals. No. No, I feel so strongly
about this that I’ve had to discard a
luxury no empire can afford to keep

when it threatens the common good.**
Juille glanced around the room, gather-
ing the eyes of her staff. She nodded.

“We’ve all agreed to this,” she went
on. “We make no secret of it. I’m so
afraid of even the remote chance of peace
at this stage, that I've given orders to
prevent it.” She paused a moment.
“I’ve given orders that the H'vani am-
bassadors be assassinated before they
reach the conference table."

There was silence for a moment. The
Dunnarian regarded Juille with expres-
sionless eyes. “They’re under truce.”
he said at last, matter-of-factlv. Juille’s
lips thinned.

“I know. But I intend to be merciless
in victory, and I may as well start now.
In this case I believe that the end more
than justifies any means necessary to
achieve it.”

“You feel there is that much danger
that the H’vani will agree to peace at
this stage, when they’re winning on all
fronts ?”

“Why else would they consent to
come?" Juille shrugged. “I don't mean
to waste any more thought on the mat-
ter. If they don't agree now, mv father
will offer it again and again, to prevent
a long war. Sooner or later, as we gain
more of the balance of power, they'll
accept if they have the chance. If we
kill their envoys under a flag of truce
now — well, there’ll be no more confer-
ences.”

The Dunnarian nodded quietly. “A
very interesting decision, highness. I
assure you I wouldn’t interfere even
if” — he glanced up at the clock — “even
if you’d given me time to."

Juille followed his gaze. “Ah.” she
said. “You’re right — they should be
landing. Helia, get us the scene."

Helia. moving with the forthright
clumping tread of an old soldier, crossed
to the screen where an animated map of
an embattled world was tracing the
course of insurrection. As she passed
the Dunnarian the liar on her shoulder
gave itself a last preening stroke, gath-
ered its sleek limbs and leaped without a

JUDGMENT NIGHT

jar onto the envoy’s shoulder. He put
up a hand to stroke it, and the little
creature bent its head to the caress, roll-
ing up its great round eyes with solemn
pleasure.

Juille stared. “I’ve never” — she stam-
mered with surprise — “never in my life
. . , why, he’ll hardly let me touch him!
I'll swear I haven’t stroked him like
that twice in my life. And he never
even saw you before !”

The envoy’s delicate, lean features
creased in the first smile she had seen
upon them. “I feel the honor keenly,”
he said to the liar. It butted its round
forehead against his palm like a cat.

A blast of music from the screen in-
terrupted them. Swimming into focus
as Helia turned the controls, the scene
of the H’vani envoy’s landing sharpened
into colorful view. Juille curled her lip
at it.

“All that ceremony,” she murmured,
“when we ought to be cutting their
throats ! Well, they’ll soon see what the
empire really thinks of them. My men
ought to show up very soon now.”

She took off her helmet and leaned
forward to watch, chin on fist, her dark-
gold braids catching the red reflections
of banners from the screen and shining
as if in firelight. The braids were
pinned like a coronet across her head to
cushion the heavy helmet which she held
now upon her knee. In its surface the
red reflections moved too, blurrily, as if
■ — in obvious simile — she cradled the
momentous event in her very lap.

The H’vani newcomers were small,
brightly clothed figures moving in a
press of soldiers. Because the emperor
had insisted that their representatives
be the highest officials of the enemy race
— its hereditary leader and its com-
mander in chief — there had been tremen-
dous haggling over the terms of safe
conduct. In the end, they had been as-
signed a camp outside the city, near
enough the boundaries of the Ancients’
forbidden territory to remind them of
the fate their ships had suffered. And

now in the midst of a bodyguard of im-
perial soldiers they rode toward the city
on horseback, amid much flurry of trum-
pets and streaming of red imperial
banners.

Juille was not much interested in the
dignitaries as individuals. Her eyes
were sweeping the crowd in quick, im-
patient glances, picturing the flash of her
assassins’ guns. And the same thought,
the same picture, was in every mind in
the room with her. No one moved,
waiting for that instant. If the power of
thought had tangibility, their common
concentration of purpose should have
been enough in itself to strike the H’vani
down.

With intolerable slowness, on the
backs of tall, mincing horses, the pro-
cession drew near the city. It was a
long, colorful ride. The people of Eri-
con, at the heart of the Galaxy’s culture,
paradoxically ride horseback when they
travel. Except for the straight, paved
roads which link city to city, there is
little power-driven traffic, and that
chiefly the transportation of supplies.
Radio-television is so superlatively de-
veloped that almost no occasion ever
arises for travel upon Ericon itself.
Sightseeing is not encouraged upon the
sacred control planet, and- so much of its
surface is forbidden by the Ancients for
their own mysterious ends, and by the
emperor for his imperial prerogatives,
that as a rule only legitimate business
traffic, with its prescribed roadways,
moves upon the face of Ericon.

As a result, horseback riding is highly
fashionable, pleasant enough and suf-
ficiently picturesque to satisfy those of
that world who go abroad for amuse-
ment. Actually, the terrene of other
planets is much more familiar, and more
easily reached, because of these restric-
tions, than the surface of Ericon itself.

The party had been riding a long time,
and the tension in the room where the
watchers sat was growing unbearable,
when a nagging familiarity about one of
the mounted figures she watched strug-
gled up past the level, of awareness into

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Juille’s conscious mind.

“Focus it down, Helia,” she said
sharply. “I want to see those men.”

The picture swooped dizzily as the
vision seemed to hover downward above
the slowly moving procession. Then the
two H’vani were large upon the screen
in bright, three-dimensional life, the
rustle of their cloaks audible in the room,
the creak of harness, the clink of fire
sword against belt.

Juille struggled against a moment of
sheer suffocation. She was horrified to
feel a tide of prickling warmth sweep up
within her, clear to the roots of the dark-
gold braids. Too many emotions were
striving for dominance in her mind —
the effect made her reel. For she knew
this blond and bearded young man with
a harp slung across his shoulder, riding
a tall horife toward the city. She knew
him very well, indeed.

Then their meeting on Cyrille had
been no accident. And — that half-for-
gotten grip upon her throat had been no
caress. For a moment, her mind and
her gaze turned inward, calling back the
brief, puzzling idyl which the urgency
of recent events had so nearly eclipsed
even from memory now. It came back
vividly enough, with that picture mov-
ing on the screen to remind her.

She sat quite still, sorting out the
memories of those three careless, oddly
disturbing days on Cyrille. Egide — that
was his name, then, Egide the H’vani —
must surely have come there because of
certain knowledge of her presence. And
he must have come with a purpose that
was not hard to guess. Especially not
hard now, when she looked back to
those few strange, tense interludes when
she had been frightened without under-
standing why.

But he had never fulfilled his mission.
He had come to kill her and he had let
her live. She felt a sudden triumphant
flush of vindication — she had guessed
his weakness even before she knew his
name. It was all there to see in that
sensitive and sensuous mouth of his, and
she had forestalled him through sheer;

instinct in the moment of his greatest
resolution. A wave of scorn for him
washed over her. A man like that was
no fit leader for revolutionaries to fol-
low. She had forestalled him in his
most urgent duty — but how had she
done it? Juille felt the deep blush re-
turning, and bent her head futiley to hide
it as her mind went back to that strange,
frightening, delightful interlude upon
the cloud.

Whatever her motive, she knew it had
been herself, not he, who made that first
inviting gesture. He had meant to kill
her. Every calculating compliment he
paid, every scene of elaborate romance
he lead her through, had been meant
only to lull her to unguarded ease. He
must have had no other purpose. But
she . . . she took it all at face value and
had seemed in the end to beg for his
kisses. The deepest depths of humilia-
tion closed over her head as she sat
there motionless, burning to the hairline
with a red blush of rage.

When her swimming gaze focused
again, she met Helia’s warning eyes and
fought for self-control. And because
Helia had bred discipline into her from
infancy, after a moment she gained it.
But the turmoil of her thoughts went
on. No wonder, she thought bitterly,
he had agreed to this conference. He
had every right to think that she knew
him now — had recognized him in some
portrait or news screen if she did not
recognize him on Cyrille — and he must
believe that she herself had insisted
upon the meeting, that the terms of
peace were hers. He might preen him-
self now with the thought that his
armorous work upon Cyrille had borne
fruit already in her betrayal of her own
people into compromise with the enemy.
She thought hotly that he would judge
her by himself and think her as ready as
he to toss principles away for the weak-
ness of a personal desire. She had to
fight down another surge of blinding
humiliation that she had made herself
vulnerable to the patronizing scorn of
such a man as this. And for an instant

JUDGMENT NIGHT

she hated, too, the amazonian upbring-
ing that had left her unarmed against
him.

Well, there was one good thing in the
ugly situation. She would never have
to face him again. Her assassins had
delayed unpardonably already, but they
surely would not delay much longer.
He would die without seeing her, with-
out knowing — without knowing she was
not deceived ! Still thinking the peace
plans were hers, because of love for
him ! No, if he died now she thought
she would die, too, of sheer anger and
shame.

She sat forward in her chair, watch-
ing the two H'vani, reading insolent
swagger into every motion they made.
To her eyes they rode like conquerors
already, coming to accept the peace
they thought her ready to hand them on
a platter. And she knew she must kill
Egide herself or never know self-respect
again.

They were at the city gates now. She
watched feverishly, on a sword-edge of
impatience for the assassins to fail after
all. Trumpets echoed from the high
white walls and the procession wound
along broad streets toward the palace.
Juille, waiting on tenterhooks for the
flash of the gun that would rob her of
her last hope for self-respect, began to
realize as the procession moved on, that
somehow her hope was to be granted.
Somehow the assassins had failed. It
was too late already for any efficient job
of killing to be done, here in the crowded
streets. She leaned to the screen, breath-
less, seeing nothing else.

She did not know that Helia was
watching her anxiously, or that the Dun-
narian’s great luminous eyes dwelt upon
her face with a fathomless sort of specu-
lation.

She paused outside the arch of the
conference hall, balancing the liar upon
her shoulder, drawing a deep breath.
Behind her Helia whispered, “All right,
all right. Come along now,” The fa-
miliar voice was marvelously bracing.

Juille smiled a grim smile, tossed her
cloak back over one shoulder and strode
in under the archway, hearing the trum-
pets blare for her coming.

They rose from their chairs around
the white table in the center of the room.
She would not look at individual faces
as she swung down the room with a
clank of empty scabbards — externally
she must keep the truce. She felt very
sure of herself now. She held her
bright-helmed head arrogantly, making
the cloak ripple with every long stride,
hearing her spurs jingle as she came.
The trumpet notes shivered and echoed
among the arches of the ceiling.

Above them rose the soaring transept
of a vast hall. Its purple walls paled to
violet and then to white as they rose to-
ward an intricate interlacing of arches
through whose translucent heights pale
sunlight came pouring. It was a very
old hall. The emperors of Ericon had
reared it upon the ruins of the race they
had displaced. And that race had built
here upon the ruins of other emperors,
ages before.

The present emperor stood white and
tall at the head of the table. Juille
bowed to him formally, but she flicked
over and past the other two men a glance
so icy that it barely acknowledged their
presence.

In one glance, though, she saw all that
she needed to see. It was Egide. The
same handsome, rash, blue-eyed young
face with the curly short beard, the curly
hair. He had hung his harp over the
chair arm where he sat, and Juille
thought it the ultimate touch of deca-
dent foppishness, incongruous in a bar-
barian prince. He wore today not an
extravagantly designed cloak - of blood
or hair, but black velvet that looked
spectacular against the silvery gleam of
his mesh mail. There was a fire-sword
scar half-healed across his cheek and
temple, and he looked a little more tired
and wary than the careless lover of
Cyrille. But the blue eyes were as con-
fident as ever on her face.

All this in one cold, flashing glance

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

that ignored him. She folded her fin-
gers lovingly over a tiny palm gun hid-
den in her hand, its metal warm from
that close hiding place. Her glance
flicked over the other man and went on.

Big, bull-chested, with reddish hair
and beard and eyes. Huge forearms
crossed over his chest. A barbarian,
typical of the savage H'vani. And yet
so openly savage, with such a direct,
fighting glare on his scarred face, that
she felt a reluctant flash of kinship with
him. Such a man, she thought, her own
remote forefathers must have been who
conquered the Galaxy by brute force
and left it for her heritage. Beside him
Egide looked the fop he was. and her
father the senile idealist.

She nodded distantly as the emperor
introduced the two. Egide, hereditary
leader of the H’vani. Jair, his com-
mander in chief. Her only thought was
a murderous one. “If I can kill them
both, what a blow to the H’vani ! And
what fools they were to come !’’

Her father was speaking. She

scarcely listened to the sonorous voice
whose echoes went whispering among
the arches in confused murmurs high
overhead.

“We sit today," the old man declared,
“over the graves of a score of races who
made the same mistake we are on the
verge of making here, and who died
because they did.’’

She could feel Egide's blue stare upon
her face. It was intolerable. All the
ages of imperial pride rose behind her,
the pride of a hundred generations that
had commanded the stars in their
courses. This one bearded barbarian sit-
ting here staring at her unashamedly, as
if he were her equal, as if he thought she,
too, must be remembering a fantastic
night-time ride upon a cloud, under stars
like burning roses in constellations with-
out a name.

She turned full upon him one bright,
furious glare that flashed like a violet
fire sword beneath the helmet brim.
“You ought to be dead," the burning
glance implied. “When I find who

JUDGMENT NIGHT

failed me, and why they failed, they’ll
be dead, too. You’re living on borrowed
time. You ought to be dead and you
will be soon — you will be soon!” She
made a chant of it in her throat, letting
her eyes half-close to slits of bright fire-
blade violet.

The emperor talked on. “We are too
evenly matched. Neither can win with-
out such destruction as will cast the
whole Galaxy back a thousand years.
On all the worlds of that Galaxy — many
new worlds that have not yet known
war — our forces stand poised in armed,
precarious truce, watching what hap-
pens here today. If we join in battle — ”

Juille made an impatient gesture and
recrossed her legs. The little palm gun
was warm in her hand. She wished pas-
sionately that the platitudes were over.
And then a treacherous spasm of pity
went over her as she listened to the deep
old voice roll on. He had been a great
warrior once, her father. This meant
so much to him, and it was so hopelessly
futile — But there was no room for pity
in the new Galaxy of today. Her lips
thinned as she fondled the trigger of her
gun. Soon, now.

“The H’vani are a young race,” the
old man went on. “A crude race, un-
lettered in any science but warfare.
Let us give you the incalculable wealth
we have to spare, that you could never
take by force. We can teach you all
our science has learned in the rich mil-
lenniums of our history. In one stride
you can advance a thousand years.

“If you refuse — there is no hope for
you. At the very best, we can and wall
destroy you, if only after such struggles
as will cost us all we have. At worst —
well, other races have met in deadly con-
flict on Ericon. Where are they now?”
He pointed toward the marble floor.
“Down there, in the dark. Under the
foundations of this hall lie the building
stones of all who fought here before us.
Have you ever been down there in the
catacombs, any of you ? Do you know
the old kings who once ruled Ericon?

Does anyone alive? And will anyone
remember us, if we fail to learn by their
example ?”

Juille’s hand came down roughly on
the sleek-furred little animal that had
slid down upon her knee, and then all
her scornful inattention vanished as the
small body twisted snakelike under her
hand. She snatched it back with light-
ning quickness, just in time to avoid the
slash of her pet’s teeth. It stared up at
her, nervously poised, clutching her
knee with flexible fingery pads, a look
of completely spurious benignity and
wisdom in its round eyes even now.

A new voice, so deeply resonant that
the air shuddered in response to it, was
saying powerfully, “When peace terms
are proposed, it’ll be the H’vani who
dictate them !”

Juille looked up sharply. The em-
peror had paused. He stood beside her
now with his head sunk a little, watching
the two envoys from under his bristling
brows. She felt a fresh spasm of pity.
But the new voice was making strong
echoes rumble among the arches of the
ceiling, and she knew it was time to pay
attention.

Jair was on his feet, his great fists
planted like mallets upon the table edge.
“We’ll talk peace with the Lyonese,” he
boomed triumphantly, “but we’ll talk
it from the throne. Time enough for — ”

Juille shoved back her chair with a
sudden furious motion and leaped to her
feet, her eyes blazing across the table.
The liar had sprung sidewise and caught
the emperor’s arm, where it hung star-
ing over its shoulder at her with enor-
mous benignant eyes.

But before she could speak, Egide’s
chair scraped leisurely across the floor,
the harp strings ringing faintly with the
motion. He stood up almost lazily, but
his words preceded hers.

“We ask the emperor’s pardon,” he
said in a calm voice. “Jair, let me talk.”

Jair gave him a strangely blank look
and sat down. Egide went on :

“What my general means to say is
that peace terms must come from us if

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

they’re to come at all. What the em-
peror says is true and we realize it, but
we believe it to be only part of the truth.
A divided victory isn’t enough for the
H’vani, no matter how many secrets you
offer as a bribe. My people are not to
be bought with promises for the future.”
He smiled whitely in the impeccable
flaxen curls of his beard, “My people,
I am afraid, are a very literal race. Not
too ready to trust an enemy’s promises.
Now if you had some specific benefit to
offer us here and now — something that
might reassure the H’vani about your
sincerity” — he glanced from Juille to the
emperor and went on with an impulsive
persuasion in his voice that Juille re-
membered well — “I think we might
have a better chance of convincing my
people that you mean what you say.”

Juille met his guileless blue gaze with
a steely look. She knew quite well what
he was hinting. So that was why they’d
come, was it? To wheedle the Dun-
narian weapon out of the emperor’s
senile, peace-bemused hands, and tak-
ing full advantage of their supposed im-
munity because of what had happened
upon Cyrille, because they must think
that she herself was equally bemused at
the memory of it. Obvious strategy, and
yet — Juille glanced at her father. No
expression showed upon his thoughtful
face, but she felt a sudden cold uncer-
tainty about what he might decide to do.
Surely he could not believe that the
H’vani meant what they said. Surely he
must see that, once they had a share in
the new and subtle weapon from Dun-
nar there'd be no stopping them this
side of the imperial throne. No, he was
certainly not yet mad.

But this was only the beginning. Talk
would go on and on, endless circlings
around the proposal Egide had just
voiced. Endless counterproposals from
the emperor. Days and days of it, while
Egide still went on believing that she
was the reason why he had been invited
here, still exchanged with her these sud-
den blue glances that recalled their days
upon Cyrille — the crystal platform drift-

ing through flowery branches and the
green evening light of spring. The
starry lake beneath their feet as they
danced, and the long smooth rhythms
when they moved together to enchanting
music. The landscapes unreeling be-
neath their couch of cloud, the great
stars blazing overhead.

No, she would not endure it. She
would end it here and now.

“Egide — ” she said in a clear, high
voice.

He turned to her with a quick eager-
ness she had not seen before. This was
the first word she had addressed to him
upon Ericon, the first time she had ever
spoken his name. He was searching
her face with a look of eagerness she
did not understand. She didn’t want to.

She walked slowly around the table
toward him. They were all on their
feet now, looking at her in surprise. All
speech had ceased and the hall was very
still. The emperor said, “Juille?” in a
voice not yet very much alarmed, but
she did not glance at him. She rounded
the end of the table and saw Egide push
his chair out of the way with a careless
thrust that knocked the harp from its
back. In the silence, the jarred strings
wailed a thin, shrill, plaintive discord
through the hall, and Egide caught the
falling instrument and smiled uneasily
at her.

She came toward him without a flicker
of returning smile. “Egide — ” she said
again. She was quite near him now.
Near enough to see the crinkling edges
of the scar that furrowed his cheek, the
separate curling hairs of his shining
beard, his thick golden lashes. Behind
him she was aware that Jair had drawn
an uneasy step or two nearer. She was
looking straight into Egide’s blue eyes,
large and unfathomable at this nearness.
She came forward one last step, bring-
ing her gun hand up,

“I want you to know,” she said dis-
tinctly, “that I had no part in asking you
here. I hate your race and all it stands
for. I mean to do everything I can to
prevent any truce between us. Every-

JUDGMENT NIGHT

thing. Do you understand me?”

The emperor did. He knew his child.
He took one long stride toward her
around the table, crying, “Juille, Juille!
Kemembcr the truce — ”

But he was too far away. Juille fixed
Egide’s fascinated stare with a hot, ex-
ultant stare of her own, and her lips
drew hack in a tight grin over her teeth.
With her face very near his, and her
gaze plumbing his gaze, she smiled and
pulled the trigger.

Then time stopped. A dozen things
happening at once, jumbled themselves
together bcwilderingly, prefaced and
veiled by a great fan of violet heat that
sprang up terribly between her face and
Egide’s. Juille heard Jair's roar and
her father's cry, and the crash of over-
turning chairs. But her brain was
numbed by the shock of that violet heat
where there should have been no heat — -
only a thin needle beam of force boring
through Egide’s corselet.

She and Egide reeled apart with
singed lashes and cheeks burning from
that sudden glare as the instantaneous
fan of light died away. Her dazzled eyes
saw dimly that he was gasping like a
man who had taken a sudden sharp blow
in the stomach, but he was not dead.
He should be dead, and he only stood
there gasping at her, blinking singed
golden lashes.

For a split second her mind could not
grasp it. She saw the silver mail burned
away across his chest where that fierce
needle beam should have bored through
llesh and bone. She saw beneath it not
charred White skin and spurting blood,
but a smooth shining surface which the
beam had not even blackened. Every-
thing was ringed with rainbows, and
when she .closed her smarting eyes she
saw the outline of burned mail and
gleaming surface beneath in reversed
colors bright against the darkness of
her lids.

Then time caught up with her. Things
began to happen again with furious
speed. The explanation flashed into her

mind as she saw Egide reaching for her.
He wore some sort of protection even
under his mail, then — some substance
that deflected the needle Warn into a .
blast of thin, scorching heat diffused,
into harmlessness. And she had an in-
stant of foolish and incongruous rage
that he had come thus protected, doubt-
ing the validity of their truce.

Then Egide’s arm slammed her hard
against the unyielding surface of what-
ever armor he wore beneath his mail.
She felt a small, reluctant admiration of
the strength in that arm — an unexpected
strength, remembered from Cyrille — and
of his almost instantaneous action even
when she knew he must be sick and
breathless from a severe blow in the pit
of the stomach. The gun’s beam would
have bruised him heavily even through
the armor, before its force fanned out
into sheer heat.

It all happened too quickly to ration-
alize. She did not even have time to
wonder why he seized her, or why Jair,
bellowing with a sound of exultation,
was dragging them both across the floor
toward the far wall. She had a con-
fused glimpse of her father’s bewildered
and outraged face. She saw the guards
leaning out of their hidden stations in
the wall across from her, guns leveled.
But she knew she herself was a shield
for the two H'vani, though what they
planned, she could not even guess.

Other guards were tumbling from
their posts, running toward them across
the hall. Juille suddenly began to fight
hard against the restraining clasp that
held her. She bruised her fists upon
the armor beneath Egide’s mail, fair
roared inexplicably :

"Open up! You hear me? Open!”

Egide crushed her ribs painfully
against his corselet and swung her feet
off the ground. For a dizzy instant the
violet walls and the sunlit white arches
of the ceiling spun in reverse around her.
She was hanging head-down over
Egide’s shoulder, seething with intoler-
able rage at this first rough handling she
had ever known in her life. But she was

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

bewildered, too, and off-balance and in-
credulous that such things could happen.
She was briefly aware of cries from the
ball, her fSther’s voice shouting com-
mands, the guards yelling. And then
came sudden darkness and a smooth,
swishing noise that cut off all sounds
behind them.

The dark smelled of dust and age-old
decay. Juille's mind told her what her
reason refused to accept — that somehow,
incredibly, these barbarians had come
forearmed with knowledge about some
panel in the walls of the imperial coun-
cil hall which a hundred generations of
ruling emperors had never guessed.

She was still upside down over
Egide’s shoulder, acutely uncomfortable,
her cheek pressed against something
cold and hard, her eves stinging from
the heat of her own gun. Voices whis-
pered around them. Someone said.
“Hurry !” and there was the muffled
sound of feet through dust that rose in
stifling clouds. And then a long, sliding
crash that filled the darkness deafen-
ingly and made the eardrums ache from
its sudden pressure in this confined
space. Someone said after a stunned
moment, “There, that does it.” Some-
one else — Jair? — said, “How?” and the
first voice, familiar but unplaceable:

“When they break through the wall,
they’ll find this rock-fall, and a false
tunnel that leads outside the city walls.
They’ll think you went that way. We
laid a trail of footprints through it yes-
terday. Safe now.”

But who . . . who was it?

“Put me down!” Juille demanded in a
fierce, muffled voice. That someone
whose tones sounded very familiar in-
deed, said :

"Better not yet. Come along. Can
you manage her?”

And the nightmare went on. Some-
one ahead carried a light that cast great
wavering shadows along the rough
walls. Juille was joggling up and down
across Egide’s shoulder through the
musty dark.^sick with fury and outrage

and bewilderment. Her eyes streamed
with involuntary tears as an aftermath
of that heat flash ; her burning cheek was
pressed hard against the corner of some-
thing cold and unyielding — Egide’s
harp? — and the dust rose chokingly all
around.

After smothered ages, the familiar
voice said: “You can put her down
now.”

There came one last upheaval and
Juille was on her feet again, automati-
cally smoothing down her tunic, glaring
through Vie dimness in a speechless
seizure of rage. She saw Egide locking
down at her with expressionless eyes,
saw Jair’s savage face dark in the torch-
light, his eyes gleaming. Between them
she saw the familiar, comforting, tough-
featured face of Helia.

For an instant her relief was greater
than she would have thought possible.
All her life that face had meant comfort,
protection, gruff encouragement against
disappointment. In the midst of this
bewilderment and indignity, the one
familiar sight made everything all right
again. Even in the face of reason —

Egide still held her arms. Now —

“Turn her around,” Helia told him,
in the familiar voice, with the familiar
homely gesture of command Juille had
known all her life, from nursery days.
She found herself spun around, her arms
held behind her. while Helia reached
under the mail tunic and took away the
little dagger that no one else knew about,
the dagger that Helia herself had taught
Juille to hide there and use unexpectedly
as a last resort.

Juille closed her eyes.

“The others will be waiting,” Helia’s
capable voice remarked calmly. “First,
though — highness. I had better tie your
hands.”

Juille wondered madly whether that
violet flash of heat had really killed her.
Perhaps it had only stunned her — that
must be it — and all this was an irra-
tional dream.

Helia’s familiar hands that had bathed
her from babyhood, dressed her hurts.

JUDGMENT NIGHT

taught her sword play and target prac-
tice — were binding her wrists behind
her now with sure, gentle swiftness.
The well-knowui voice said as the bind-
ing went on :

“You must understand, highness, be-
fore you meet the rest. I don’t want you
to face them without understanding.”
She drew the soft cords tighter. “I am
an Andarean, highness. Your race con-
quered ours a hundred generations ago.
But we never forget. Here under the
city, in the catacombs that were once
our own imperial halls, we've met to
pass along from father to son the tradi-
tion of our heritage. We’ve planned all
these centuries for a day like this.
There.” She gave the cords a final pat.
“Now, keep your head up and don’t
let them see it if you’re confused. Wait
a minute.” She came around in front of
Juille, clucked disapprovingly, and took
out a handkerchief to wipe the dust from
Juille’s hot face where the tears had
streaked it. Then she straightened the
helmet that had fallen by its chin strap
over one ear.

“Keep your head up,” she said again.
“Remember what I’ve taught you. We
may have to kill you later, my dear —
but while you live, you’re still my girl
and I want to be proud of you. Now —
march !”

And so, bewildered to the point of
madness, still choked by the dust in her
nostrils, her eyes burning and her hands
tied behind her, but with her head up
because Helia, insanely, wanted to be
proud of her, Juille let herself be
marched forward, up shallow steps and
into a big low cavern lighted by square
windows through which light streamed
from some outside source.

There were people here, sitting along
the walls on benches. Not many. Juille
knew some of the faces — servants' and
small courtiers about the palace. A few
of them held responsible positions with
the defense forces.

From among them a man stepped for-
ward. Juille did not know him, except

that his features were Andarean. He
wore a purple tunic and cloak, and he
bowed to the two H’vani.

“We are making history here,” he
said in a soft, low-piiched voice. “This
is the turning point in the war for
Galactic domination. We of Andarea
welcome you and the future you will
control.”

Jair drew a deep breath and started to
say something. Juille was aware that
Egide’s elbow jammed into his ribs.
Egide, still breathing a little unevenly
from the gun bolt in the stomach, spoke
instead in his most courtly voice:

“We H’vani will owe you a great deal.
You’ve managed things perfectly so far.
But we haven’t much time now. The
weapons — ”

The Andaman's long eyes slid around
to Juille. It was at once a query and a
murderous suggestion, without words.
Juille felt a sudden shudder of goose
flesh. New experiences had crowded
one another in these last few minutes
until she was dizzy with trying to adjust
to them — she had never been manhan-
dled before, she had never before been
treated like an object instead of a per-
son, and she hotly resented the fact that
Egide had not directly addressed a word
to her since the moment in the hall when
she had tried to kill him.

Behind her dimly she saw Helia step
forward to lay a hand on Egide’s arm.
Suddenly she knew how Egide had
learned of her presence on Cyrille — per-
haps, too, why her assassins had failed
to reach the H'vani during their ride
into the city. But when Egide spoke his
voice was firm, as if he had not needed
prompting.

“Juille is our hostage,” he told the
Andarean. “There, I think, we’ve im-
proved on your plan. If anything goes
wrong, we still have something to bar-
gain with.”

The Andarean nodded dubiously, his
narrow, impassive eyes lingering on her
face as if in reluctance. “Perhaps.
Well, we’d better get started. We — ”

"Wait.” Egide glanced around the

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

cavern, dim in the light that so oddly
came through from outside. “Are these
all of you?”

“Almost all.” The Andarean said it
carelessly. “Our numbers have dwin-
dled very much in the last few genera-
tions."

Juille narrowed her eyes at him. That
was a lie. The Andareans were few, but
certainly not this few. Grateful for some
problem she could take a real hold upon,
she cast her mind back searchingly over
the past history of this race, making a
mental note to have the heads off certain
of her espionage officials if she ever got
out of this alive.

Long ago the earlier emperors had
kept close spies upon their overthrown
predecessors, but the watch had relaxed
as generations passed and the Andarean
numbers grew less. They were too few,
really, to matter except in some such
accident as this, when chance assembled
just the right factors to make their
treachery dangerous.

So the two H’vani had come — why?
Exactly why ? Groping back among the
tangled skeins of plot and counterplot
Juille lost her grip again upon clear
thinking. They were here because they
thought in her weakness she had asked
them to talk peace terms — because they
hoped to trick possession of the Dun-
narian weapon out of the Lyonese hands
— because of some treacherous promises
from these skulkers in the underground.
And those skulkers themselves were
lying out of the depths of further
schemes. of their own.

She got a cold sort of comfort out of
that. If the H’vani had deceived her
and her father, they' in turn were being
deceived. For there were far more An-
darcans upon Ericon than she saw here.
Their leader would not have lied just
now if he were not playing some des-
perate game with his new allies.

Weapons. Egide had asked about
weapons. W ere the Andareans offering
him some new offensive measure to use
against the Lyonese? And why? The
Andareans were a subtle race; surely

they had cherished the memories of their
great lost heritage too long, if Helia told
the truth, to give up their future to
H’vani rule, supposing the H’vani won.
And surely they w r ere too wise in the
ways of deceit to trust H’vani promises
even should they win.

Juille gave up the problem as Helia
took her arm again and drew her after
the others. They were moving out of
the low cavern with its strange outside
lighting. Helia padded along softly at
Juille's side, her eyes downcast. Juille
looked at her in the dim light, finding
no words with which to reproach her.
She was still too stunned by this sudden
failure of the solidest assurance in her
life to look at it with any rational clarity. "■

Nor was Helia a woman to offer
apologies.

“Look around you,” she said
brusquely as they filed out of the cavern.
“You may never see a sight like this
again.”

The cavern, seen from outside in
clearer light, was obviously the col-
lapsed remnants of a much higher room.
What might once have been a hallway
ran around it outside, the walls patterned
with luminous blocks that shed a glow
which must be three thousand years old.

The walls showed scars of age-old bat-
tle. Juille’s first imperial ancestors
might very well have commanded the
guns that made them. For this upper-
most level of the tunnels which lay be-
neath the city must once have comprised
the lower stories of the palace the An-
dareans had built in the days of their
glory.

The ruins had been leveled off and
sealed when the modern palace was built.
Everyone knew of the honeycombing
layers which went down and down in
unknown depths of level under level.
Some of them had been explored, cur-
sorily. But they were much too unsafe
for any systematic examination, and far
too deep to be cleared out or filled up to
give the city a firm foundation.

The confusion of interlacing passages,

JUDGMENT NIGHT

level blending with level, was so complex
that explorers had been known to vanish
here and never reappear. And im-
memorial traps, laid down millenniums
ago by retreating defenders in forgotten
wars, sometimes caught the innocent
blundering along dusty tunnels. Walls
and floors collapsed from time to time
under the weight of exploring footsteps.
No, it was not a safe place for the casual
adventurer to visit.

But perhaps in each dynasty the sur-
vivors of the defeated race had lurked
here in the cellars of theif lost and
ruined city, remembering their heritage
and plotting to regain it. Perhaps —
Juille thought of it grimly — her own
people one day might creep in darkness
through the shattered remnants of her
purple plastic halls and jeweled arches,
buried beneath the mounting stories of
a new city, whispering the traditions of
the Lyonese and plotting the downfall of
triumphant H’vani. And perhaps they,
too, might explore downward, as the
Andareans had obviously done, search-
ing the dangerous lower levels for some
weapon to turn against the victors.

From the murmurs that drifted back
to her along the tunnels she knew that
something valuable lay hidden here, un-
less the Andareans were lying again. It
was hard to believe that any such
weapon actually existed, unknown after
so many generations of curious explor-
ers. And yet the Andareans sounded
very sure. Egide and Jair would cer-
tainly not have risked their necks on
such a mission unless the promise had
been soundly based on evidence.

Indeed, it seemed incredible that these
two foremost leaders of the revolt would
have dared to endanger their lives and
their whole campaign on such a gamble
as this, had they not been very sure of
escape.

Someone ahead was carrying a radiant
globe of translucent plastic on the end
of a tall handle. She could see Egide’s
confident yellow head haloed with light
from it, and Jair's great bulk outlined

AST— 4X

against the glow. The light sliding
along the walls showed scenes of for-
gotten Andarean legends, winged ani-
mals and eagle-headed men in low re-
lief upon which dust had gathered like
drifts of snow. They passed windows
of colored glass that no longer opened
upon anything but darkness. They
passed rooms which the soft light briefly
revealed in amorphous detail under
mounds of smothering dust.

And once they came out on a balcony
over a scene that took Juillet’s breath
away. The vast hall below them was
built on a sale so tremendous that it
seemed incredible that human minds
had conceived it. Its vast oval was pro-
portioned so perfectly that only the
giddy depths below them made the room
seem as large as it was. A muted blue
radiance lighted it from incredible
heights of windows lifting columns of
blue unbroken glass from floor to ceiling,
all around the walls.

Helia said with a sort of gruff pride,
“This was one of our temples once,
highness. No one’s ever built such a
temple since. See that glass ? The secret
of it’s lost now. The light's in the
glass itself, not from outside." She
was silent for a moment, looking down.
Then she said in a softer voice, “An-
darea was a great nation, highness. You
feel the same about yours. Remember
what you said today, about breaking the
truce? The end justifies any means you
have to take. I think so, too.’’

It was as near as she could come to
apology or explanation. And Juille,
after a moment of blinking dismay at
this application of her own theories
turned against her, was conscious of
sudden respect for this inflexible woman
at her side. Here was the true amazon,
she thought, more ruthless than any man
in the naked simplicity of her cast-off
femininity. This was the one quality
Juille could respect above all others.
She glanced ahead at Egide’s broad back,
despising him for the lack of it. Un-
swerving faithfulness to a principle,
whatever that principle might be.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Juille wondered what Egide was
thinking, how he interpreted to himself
her attempt at murder. Well, if she had
failed it was not for weakness like his.
And there might come another chance.
Her mind had begun to awaken again
after the stunning shocks of the past half
hour. Already she was making plans.
Helia she thought she understood. Helia
would protect her while she could. She
would see to her comfort and save her
face whenever possible, but when the
time came, Helia might kill her with a
steady hand. And Juille would have
scorned her if the hand shook.

They went down a sweep of tremen-
dous stairs and fded, a pigmy row,
across the floor of that vast hall under
the shining blue columns of the win-
dows. And from there they went down
sharply, and down again.

There was tension in the air of these
lower levels. Once an Andarean went
ahead to a curtain of spider webs that
veiled the passage and lifted it aside on
the point of a staff, with exaggerated
care, while the party passed beneath.
And once they balanced carefully in
single file along a bridge of planks laid
upon perfectly solid flooring.

They had come so far now, by such
devious ways, that she had no idea where
she was, or at what level. She was sure
the H’vani were equally at a loss. And
it occurred to her briefly that they were
at the mercy of their guides now — that
the Andareans could come very close to
putting an end to the Galaxy-wide war-
fare here and now in the dusty dark.
For robbed of their leaders, the armies
would certainly falter. But Juille felt
quite sure that whatever the Andareans
wanted, it was not peace.

They had, perhaps, taken steps even
surer than her own to make certain that
the emperor’s peace conference came to
nothing. The H'vani, primed with
promises of mysterious weapons, would
be in no mood to make a truce with any
idea of keeping it.

She demanded suddenly of Helia, still

walking at her elbow in the old accus-
tomed place, “Why haven't the An-
dareans used these weapons them-
selves?” And she saw Egide’s broad
back tense a little, the harp slung across
his shoulder — where she had hung
ignobly a little while before — shifting
place at the motion of muscles beneath.
She knew that he must have been won-
dering the same thing. And she knew
he was listening.

"As we told the H’vani,” Helia said,
“we aren’t a nation of fighters any more,
highness. And there are too few of us.
We couldn’t risk losing the weapons in
any tentative uprising.”

So they’d told the H’vani that already,
had they? And it hadn’t satisfied Egide
any more than it did herself. Helia was
a magnificent fighter. She had taught
Juille all she knew. A determined, secret
band of men and women armed with an
unexpected weapon could have seized
key positions on planets enough to swing
the balance of power to themselves if
they chose, and if they were gifted with
the subtle minds the Andareans had
already shown themselves to possess.
Juille would not have hesitated, in such
a case. And she didn’t think Helia
would either, if there were no alterna-
tive.

Obviously, there was an alternative.
They were using the H’vani against the
imperial forces — why ?

Suddenly, Juille saw the answer. It
was the simplest strategy in the world,
and the safest. You could risk an up-
rising, your own neck and ultimate fail-
ure by acting yourself, or you could pit
the two forces of greatest power against
one another, preventing any truce be-
tween them by devious methods, arming
one against the other to maintain a per-
fect balance — until they had wiped each
other out. When both sides had strug-
gled to exhaustion, why then let the An-
dareans step in and take over the control
they had been prepared to take for so
many centuries. It was so easy.

TO BE CONCLUDED.

The Mutant’s
Brother

by Fritz Leibcr, Jr.

Science hasn't worked on supermen — but with
men, environment can make a lot of difference
even between a pair of twins. If one were
"brought up wrong " — the error might be costly .

Illustrated by Kramer

The cabin of the Steelton airjet was
like a long satiny box, hurled miracu-
lously through the night. Inside it, the
thunder of the jets was muted to a sooth-
ing rumble. Passengers dozed in the
soft gloom, or chatted together in low,
desultory voices.

There was comfort in the cabin, and
the warmth of human security.

But Greer Canarvon turned away
from his fellow passengers and peered
out at the wild rack of wind-torn clouds,
silvered by a demon moon. Like shad-
owy monsters they loomed and writhed,
now bending close around the airjet,
now opening their ranks so that he
caught moonlit glimpses of the ragged
Dakota Bad Lands.

Out there, he knew, lay his real kin-
ship — with all that is alien and terrible
and lonely. With the wild forces of
darkness and the unknown. With all
that is abnormal and inhuman, though
it wear the mask of humanity.

Hunger to be with one of his own

kind — a hunger which had never been
satisfied — rose to a new pitch of poign-
ancy. He fumbled in his pocket for
the radiogram, which already looked
creased and old, although it bad popped
out of the radioprinter only yesterday.

CONSOL SKYGRAMS
EXPRESS BEAM No. 3A-3077-B89

9/17/197 3

GREER CARNARVON
209 BUNA TERRACE
COMPTON, OHIO

DEAR BROTHER.

IT IS TIME WE GOT IN CONTACT.
IF YOU ARE WHAT 1 THINK YOU
ARE, YOU WILL KNOW WE HAVE
MUCH TO TALK ABOUT THAT ONLY
YOU AND I CAN UNDERSTAND.
THE ADDRESS IS 1532 DAMON
PLACE, STEELTON. IF YOU COME,
HURRY. IOHN HALLIDANE.

Greer’s heart pounded — that heart
whose beating always brought a momen-
tary frown of perplexity to doctor’s faces
as they listened to it through their

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

stethoscopes. He felt for ' a cigarette,
but the package was empty. He
glanced at his conventional radioactive-
driven wrist watch. Half an hour yet
to Steelton. An hour perhaps before he
got to Damon Place.

His only brother. His twin brother.
And, if orphanage records of their strik-
ing similarity could be trusted, his
identical twin. The only person in the
whole world whose chromosomes and
genes could carry the pattern of that
frightening mutation.

For it must be a mutation. It was
unthinkable that his parents could have
possessed his powers and still lived
such cramped and mediocre lives as the
brief records showed. Almost equally
unthinkable that such characteristics
could have lain dormant in the germ
plasm for generations, submerged by
dominant factors, to be brought to life
by one chance mating.

“I’m coming home a day early to
please the wife,” one of the men in the
seat ahead was explaining jocularly.
"This Carstairs business has made her
jumpy.”

“A regular city-wide scare,” agreed
his airjet acquaintance. “Glad to be
back with the family myself.”

Home, thought Greer bitterly. The
familiar, the cozy, the safe, the tried-
and-true — all he was now cut off from.
Should he lean forward and whisper
confidentially, "Speaking of scares, gen-
tlemen, I have certain knowledge that
there is a monster on this airjet.”

Though for that matter his own home
life had been of the most pleasantly
conventional sort. His foster parents
were grand people — apparently he’d
been luckier than John in that regard.
During childhood and adolescence there
had been only the most shadowy intima-
tions of what would some day set him
so utterly apart. Doctors had frowned
at his heartbeat, had puzzled over some-
thing in his eyes and an odd tinge in the
color of his skin. They had caught
fleeting, almost intangible impressions
of otherness. But being practical physi-

cians, they had assured themselves that
his health was sound, and had gone no
further. Or perhaps something — some
kind of intuition that shields men from
contact with the unnatural— had made
them sheer off.

At times he had wondered, with a
touch of fear, if there weren’t something
different about him. But all children do
that.

Otherwise, he had grown up as
a healthy, normal child in a favorable
environment. His ideals and aims and
standards of behavior had been those
of the children around him — a little bet-
ter, perhaps, for his foster father was a
very upright man.

And all the while that thing — that
power — had been silently breeding in
his flesh.

The cabin lurched gently, and the
rumble of the jets went a tone deeper,
as if some vast organ in space were
sounding the opening notes of an awe-
some prelude. The silvery-smoky cloud
monsters swooped close.

Awareness of his power had come
with the suddenness of a .thunderclap.
Afterward he remembered the splitting
headaches he’d had for weeks, and real-
ized that something might have been
growing in his brain. Some new organ
for which his skull hardly provided
space.

Not all characteristics of an individ-
ual, whether normal or mutant, need be
present at birth. Some, like sexuality,
mature late. His power was like that.

He stared at the ragged cloud mon-
sters. They seemed for a moment to
be reeling in a wild dance, perhaps in
invocation of the spirit of the grotesque
and barren landscape the airjet was
traversing. A terror of the abnormality
lurking in the cosmos possessed him.
Evolution was such a coldly and fright-
eningly inhuman process. Mutation
worked by chance. It had no pattern
or plan. Usually it only botched the
normal organism. Sometimes, though
rarely, it brought a slight improvement

THE MUTANT’S BROTHER

But it could, conceivably, give rise to —
anything.

He realized he was trembling slightly.
His face was a tight mask. He auto-
matically lingered for a cigarette, then
remembered that the package was empty
and crumpled it. He was frightened of
his own power, terrified. It was such a
darkly inhuman thing, like a survival
from myth or primitive sorcery. That
was one of the reasons he had not been
able to tell anyone about it. It had such
immense potentialities. It made a man
a king — much more than a king. It
clamored to be used. It tempted him,
and he wondered if he would be strong
enough to resist temptation.

He must talk to someone about it!
In less than an hour, he would be with
his brother. It would be easier then.
Together they could work out some
course of action. If only they could
have gone together sooner!

Greer had not always known that he
had a brother. When his foster parents
took him from the orphanage, his twin
had already been adopted by the Halli-
danes. Later on his foster parents had

tried to bring the two boys together, for
a visit at least, but the Hallidanes had
rebuffed this friendly suggestion.

There were things which his foster
parents had not told him about the
Hallidanes — unpleasant things, which
he had not only discovered through his
recent inquiries at the orphanage. How
the Hallidanes had been accused of neg-
lect and cruelty with regard to their
adopted son, but had successfully fought
a legal action. How — final action of

what must have been a sordid domestic
tragedy — the father had murdered the
mother and then killed himself.

That had happened a little less than
a year ago. Thereafter the orphanage
had lost track of John Hallidane.

For a brief moment the soft lights of
the cabin winked out. Chilly moon-
light, flooding through a gap in the
turbulent clouds, transformed his fellow
passengers into a company of ghosts,
bound on some ominous mission.

Since Greer had first learned that he
had a twin, he had indulged in endless
speculations about him. He imagined

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

his twin doing the same things, thinking
the same thoughts. Realization that he
\yas a mutant had changed those specu-
lations into a frantic desire for contact.
During the past months he had made
every conceivable attempt to pick up his
brother’s trail. All had failed. In the
end it was his brother who had gotten
in touch with him.

Evidently John Hallidane had been
kept completely ignorant of the fact that
he had a twin, and had only discovered
it by chance. Perhaps he had recently
recontacted the orphanage.

Again Greer scanned the terse radio-
gram. He could read something like
his own anxiety between the guarded
lines. The same hunger for a kindred
being. The same fear of being found
out by strangers. “If you are what I
think you are — ”

Anticipation made Greer’s mind al-
most painfully alive. Speculations
about his brother and his brother’s life
flashed through it more quickly than he
could grasp them. There were a thou-
sand things he wanted to know.

“Well, we should be there in a couple
of minutes,” observed one of the men
on the seat ahead, reaching for his hat.
“Then we’ll be able to get the real dope
on this Carstairs business,” he added.

“No doubt of that,” his companion
replied with a faint, nervous chuckle.
“Everybody in Steelton must be talking
about it.”

Only half an hour now — maybe less !
As Greer folded the radiogram, he real-
ized that his hands were shaking. His
body throbbed — a suffocating feeling.

The muffled thunder of the jets
changed to a different key. He pressed
his face against the cold transparency of
the window. The air jet was slanting
down toward a hole in the thinning
clouds. Through it, as through a vast
reducing glass, he could glimpse the
streets and towers of Steelton. A gen-
eral glow, and the absence of bright
points of glaring light, made it seem
like a spectral city.

For a moment the emotion he felt
was not so much eagerness as fear.

“Package of Camdeiis,” Greer told
the girl at the tobacco counter, a tiny
bower of garish plastics in the vaulted
immensity of the Steelton Terminals.

“Self-lighters?”

He shook his head. While she was
getting them, he jerkily tried to analyze
what it was that struck him as so
peculiar in the behavior of the people
around him. There was something set
about their expressions, something tense
about their movements. They were a
little like the robot mannequins parading
shimmering garments in the display
front opposite. The hum of conversa-
tion wasn’t as loud as it should be. The
amplified voice of the newscaster rang
out too clearly. From the moment he’d
landed, the atmosphere of apprehension
had been as palpable as fog. Steelton
was like a city awaiting attack.

Probably just a reflection of his own
nervousness.

Impatiently he turned back toward the
counter and caught the girl staring at
him fixedly. He took the package from
her hand. She smiled, nervously this
time. As she was getting his change,
she siill watched him guardedly.

He lit a cigarette. He heard the
newscaster say: “Tonight Police Direc-
tor Marly assured a committee of Steel-
ton citizens that it will only be a matter
of time before Robert Carstairs is ap-
prehended. Every police officer is on
the alert, said Marly. We have sworn
in two hundred deputies. Our nets are
closing in. Robert Carstairs’ hours of
liberty are numbered.”

Suddenly Greer realized that the
hum of conversation and the echoing
tramp of footsteps had ceased almost
altogether. The girl at the counter
turned away to look at the huge tele-
screen. That was what the rest of them
were doing.

"We take this opportunity to repeat
a previous statement of Police Director
Marly,” continued the newscaster. “It

THE MUTANT’S BROTHER

is the duty of every citizen to aid in
ridding Steelton of this menace. Robert
Carstairs is dangerous. As the terrible
tragedy at the Carstairs residence
proved only too well, he displays a
fiendish talent for ingratiating himself
with his victims and subjecting them to
his will power. If you sec this man, in-
stantly inform the police.’"

Then Greer saw flashed on the tele-
screen what was, in every detail and
particular, a gigantic picture of him-
self.

What happened next seemed to Greer
to happen slow-motion. The girl turned
around. Her mouth sucked in air for a
scream.

But the scream never came. He
exerted his power. He did not see her
thoughts — he seldom could see thoughts.
He merely exerted his power. She
stood there, staring woodenly.

Ducking his head so that half his
face was masked by hat brim, he walked
away rapidly. He could hold her for
perhaps a hundred feet. By that time—

A big man carrying a black suitcase
looked at him sharply, then looked again.
He dropped the suitcase. He turned on
Greer, his hands coming up to grab.

But they never grabbed. Under
Greer's control, he picked up the suit-
case and walked on.

Several people noticed the incident.
They peered at Greer curiously. First
two of them, then three, he had to bring
under his control, as he saw that they
recognized him as the man they had
seen on the telescreen. He didn’t know
how many he could dominate, because he
had never tried. Not more than four
or five, he had the feeling.

From behind came a piercing scream,
as the girl at the tobacco counter es-
caped from his influence.

The way everyone jumped at that
scream gave him an idea. Distraction.
There was a young man approaching in
a gray coat and hat not unlike his own.
Just as the number of people who recog-
nized him was getting beyond his con-

trol, he caused the young man to break
into a run. and sent three people after
him yelling. “There he goes ! There he
goes !’’ Then he continued toward the
exit.

He felt a profound thrill of satisfac-
tion. It was good to have to use his
power without having time to be afraid
of it. to think, to weigh the conse-
quences. He walked purposefully, eyes
searching the crowd ahead for the tell-
tale signs of recognization, exerting con-
trol when he saw them.

Here and there behind him men and
women awoke with a jerk — to fear and
to the disquieting realization that four
or five seconds had vanished unaccount-
ably. They had seen the archcriminal
Robert Carstairs. They had been
about to do something. Then lie had
suddenly vanished — as if life were a
film and the film had jumped a couple
of feet ahead. Had it been an hallu-
cination ? Or — what son of being was
this Robert Carstairs. There were
stories — stories which the newscasters
played down. Around their hearts
twined the tendrils of an icy terror.

A surging agitation followed Greer
through the crowd, like a wave that
lapped at his heels but never quite
caught up. He was constantly shift-
ing control from one group of persons
to another.

The young man in the gray coat and
hat came to himself and began to make
profuse, bewildered apologies to an
elderly woman he had careened into.
His pursuers stopped and stared around,
as baffled as he. Individual communi-
cators clicked an alert to the police and
detectives stationed in the terminals, as
an observer in the gallery sought to
fathom the nature of the commotion.

Greer was nearing the exit. But the
agitation was increasing, and more and
more it was centering around him, clos-
ing in. Too many people were staring
at him. The situation was getting
beyond his control. If he had to hold
off a dozen at once, he was done for.
Five or six was the limit.

He changed his tactics — caused four
men to form a cordon around him,
shielding him from view. He had them
walk briskly and assume important, offi-
cial-looking expressions, so that people
got out of their way.

There were two policemen at the exit,
trim in blue and silver, suspicious-eyed.
But as they came within range of
Greer’s power, their expressions became
first blank, then different. They opened
the doors for him. He slipped away
from his cordon. He kept control of
the policemen, causing them to stand at
the exit and block off any possible pur-
suit.

There was a sleek black monocab
cruising past the Terminals. He sum-
moned it to the curb. It gave to his
weight as he sprang aboard. The gyro
brought it smoothly back to even keel
as it lunged ahead.

Under his control, the driver turned
several corners at random, then headed
for the rendezvous at Damon Place.

Since Steelton was a young metro-
polis, indirect street lighting was the

rule. The result was ghostly, unreal—
a shadowless city half materialized from
the night. It seemed to Greer that there
were unusually few people abroad.
None of them loitered. Their taut ap-
prehensiveness was more marked even
than that of the crowd at the Terminals.

The monocab purred like a satiny
cat. Greer felt himself slipping into a
mood of black reaction. There was
something fundamentally loathsome
about using people like puppets. You
didn’t know where to stop.

Was that what had happened to his
twin ? Had he yielded to the temptation
to use his mutant power to his own
aggrandizement, make people his
pawns ?

Greer’s mind veered away from the
possibility. Much more likely, lie told
himself, that his twin had gotten into
trouble by unwisely revealing his power.
That was enough to make people hate
you, fear you, fabricate hysterical accu-
sations, lay all manner of crimes at your
door. How else could you expect peo-
ple to behave toward a mutant with the
power of direct hypnotic control?

THE MUTANT’S BROTHER

Yet why the change of name from
Hallidane to Carstairs? Why — He
fought the ugly suspicions that crowded
up into his mind. Partly from un-
reasoning loyalty. Partly because he
so ached for contact with his own kind,
that he could not bear to think of any-
thing standing between them. His
brother’s attitudes must be like his own !

A police monocar droned past. Greer;
ducked his head, acutely aware that,
whatever predicament his brother was
in, he was in it, too. For the present,
there were two Robert Carstairs in
Steelton.

Of course, if he had to, he could prove
his identity. Or could he? Steelton’s
panic was of the hysterical, shoot-on-
sight sort. And suppose he did prove
that he was Robert Carstairs’ identical
twin. Wouldn’t that only mean two
monsters to be exterminated instead of
one?

His brother must stand in desperate
need of help. Now he could under-
stand the last line of the radiogram, “If
you come, hurry.”

The tnonocab swung into a wealthy
residential district. The houses drew
back, screened themselves with trees.
The diminished street lighting was a
ghostly counterpart to the cold beams of
the high-riding moon. At reduced
speed the motor was almost silent.
From somewhere far off Greer heard the
wail of a siren mount and die away.
The face of the driver was placid but
very pale. Greer shuddered, although it
was his own power which controlled the
man. It was too much like traveling
under the guidance of the undead.

Quietly, almost furtively, because the
driver responded to Greer’s present
mood, the monocab drew up in front of
a yawning archway on which appeared,
in glowing metal, the numerals “1532.”

Greer stepped out, looking around
puzzledly. Something seemed definitely
out of key. This was not the sort of
neighborhood in which he had expected
to meet his brother.

In response to his unspoken question.

the driver turned. Moonlight blanched
the last color from his features. He
enunciated tonelessly, “Yes, I know this
place. It is the Carstairs residence.”

At that instant Greer’s mind dark-
ened with the cloudy telepathic warn-
ing that there were minds inimical to
himself within his range of control.

From the archway, and from a similar
archway across the street, narrow beams
of white light struck him like dazzling
spears. That such beams traced the
course along which police bullets would
follow, Greer knew. But the telepathic
warning had given him the split second
he needed. Before fingers could press
triggers, the minds which the fingers
obeyed were under his control.

Yet something whipped past his ear
with a faint, high-pitched squeal. A
gout of momentary incandescence blos-
somed from the pavement beyond him as
an explosive bullet struck. From a roof
perhaps a hundred yards away a lone
searchbeam was seeking him out, in-
exorably determining the path of a sec-
ond shot.

Once again, as at the station, it
seemed to Greer that everything was
going slow-motion except his thoughts.
His mind reached out to overpower that
of the police gunman. But, as he feared,
the distance was too great. The lone
seachbeam seemed to crawl as it swung
in on him. Yet its crawl was airjet
speed compared to anything he could get
out of his muscles. The gunman would
get at least two more shots before he
could reach cover. Perhaps three.
There w r as only one thing to do.

Almost before he realized it, the
searchbeams of the police under his con-
trol swung away from him, scattered,
reconverged on a high, tiny figure sil-
houetted against the massed black tub-
ing of a sun-heater. As one, their guns
spoke. The lone searchbeam careened
wildly. There was a nerve-racking
pause. Theii the sickening hollow’ smack
of- a body hitting pavement.

A spasm of revulsion went through

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Greer. It was murder he had com-
manded. The man on the roof hadn’t
had a chance.

Yet even as he fought that reaction of
self-loathing, even as he strained to
maintain control of the police, he real-
ized that it was not alone the impulse of
self-preservation which had motivated
him.

There was a job to be done, a job
that only he could do. There was a
monster at large in Steelton, and Steel-
ton must be ridded of that monster.

“Not only Steelton. The whole
world.

In one dizzy instant, his fears and
suspicions crystallized. Only loyalty to
his unknown brother, and an aching de-
sire for the companionship of his own
kind, could have blinded him to the ob-
vious truth.

Why had his brother summoned him
to Steelton, without even warning him
of the deadly danger to which he would
be exposed ? For one reason, and one
alone — so that Greer Canarvon would
be killed. So that Steelton would think
that Robert Carstairs had been killed.
So that his twin would be free to ex-
ploit his power without suspicion —
with more caution and sublety, no doubt,
but with infinitely greater danger to
mankind.

It was not so much hate that ■ filled
Greer, as a cold and unswerving de-
termination. Already he had made his
plan. The police under his control were
escorting him to their monocar.

His thoughts were coming with a ma-
chine! ike rapidity. All Steelton was en-
gaged in a man hunt. If his brother’s
mind worked like his own, there was
one very obvious place for his brother
to be.

And if he were at that place, Greer
knew a very simple way of getting at
him.

Once again tattered clouds marched
across the moon. Through lonely
streets the monocar raced toward its
destination, the siren wailing a chal-

lenge, like some night-thing. Greer sat
between two policemen, and there were
two more on the seat ahead. To all in-
tents, he was their prisoner.

One of them was reciting a brief his-
tory of the Carstairs case. Only a cer-
tain lack of color in his voice indicated
that he was under direct hypnotic con-
trol — unconscious, yet as obedient to
Greer’s wordless commands as the man
at the monocar controls.

"At first we only thought that an un-
usually clever pickpocket must be at
work. Even at that time there had been
a crop of odd suicides, but we didn’t
connect them up until later. Some of
the people who were robbed claimed that
their minds had gone blank, usually
while strolling down a busy street. They
had come to themselves perhaps a half
a block later and found their valuables
missing. We supposed they’d day-
dreamed and that the pickpocket had
taken advantage of their abstraction.
Later we had to change that opinion,
for in two cases witnesses reported hav-
ing seen the victim hand over his
pocketbook to a young man, apparently
of his own free will.

“About the same time, there had
began an inexplicable series of bur-
glaries. Householders would go to an-
swer the door chimes, their minds would
blank out, later they would recover con-
sciousness and discover that their homes
had been ransacked. A newscaster got
hold of that and started a wild story
about a criminal who used a mysterious
gas to render his victim helpless. The
police doctors found no support for any
such view.”

The monocab banked sharply around
a corner. But the voice went on without
a break, calmly.

“At first we thought the' robberies and
the other cases were fakes, done to col-
lect insurance or perpetrate similar
frauds. But there were too many of
them, and the faking wasn’t good
enough.

“Then a woman came to us with a

THE MUTANT'S BROTHER

story that the Carstairs girl had blurted
out to her. The Carstairs are

about the richest people in town.
The Carstairs girl claimed that

they were being victimized by a
young man who had installed himself
in their home and was passing himself
off to visitors as a distant relative. He
could control their minds, she said, cause
them to lose consciousness and make
them do anything he wanted them to.
He had made very explicit threats as
to what he would do if any one of them
squealed to an outsider while not under
his influence. They were all terrified of
him. The Carstairs girl herself was
pitiably frightened, hut she just had to
talk.

“At any rate, that was the story the
woman told us. It was pretty wild, like
a lot of groundless accusations we’d been
getting. But we went to the Carstairs
home to investigate, taking the woman
along.

“The Carstairs girl denied the whole
story. Said the woman had invented it.
Yes, their cousin Robert was visiting
with them, but he was a completely re-
spectable young man. The accusations
were absurd. And so on. We didn’t
know at the time that Robert Carstairs
must have been in the next room.

"She talked in a very calm and reason-
able way — there wasn’t the slightest
indication that she was hiding any fear.
That was what was so convincing about
it. It was our woman who got hys-
terical.

“But because we were at our wits’ end
and not passing up anything, a detective
was assigned to shadow Robert Car-
stairs.

“Two days later that detective care-
fully locked himself in a room and com-
mitted suicide.

“A real locked-room suicide, with a
note in his own handwriting and every-
thing else. No chance of a fake. Still
— the coincidence. Police Director
Marly started some general inquiries
about Robert Carstairs. Very quietly,
of course, for the Carstairs bad enough
influence to stop an inquiry if they got
wind of it — and if they were under his
power that was presumably what they’d
do.

“Gradually, adding one bit of informa-
tion to another, we got at the truth.
Friends of the Cartstairs complained
that the whole family was becoming
moody. On some occasions, usually
when Robert was present, they would
be very pleasant — though there was
something unfamiliar about their man-
ner. At other times they would appear
very miserable, as if haunted by some
secret which they dared not divulge.
Some of those same friends mentioned
feeling acutely uncomfortable in Robert
Carstairs’ presence. For some reason
they could not define, they were afraid
of him. One or two of them spoke of
experiencing unaccountable mental
lapses in the Carstairs home.

“A discharged servant told an ugly
story which indicated that Robert Car-

fOR ** E F0R ENER GV"

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

stairs’ word was law in the household.

“We tried to find out his background,
where he came from. We w T ere . up
against a brick wall.

"Businessmen talked of how old Car-
stairs was changing the financial policies
of his firm. Some of them thought that
Robert Carstairs was somehow re-
sponsible for this.

“Meanwhile, the crime wave con-
tinued. More and more of the crimes
seemed to be of a purely wanton sort,
done to satisfy a whim or to display
power, rather than for the sake of gain.
You got the feeling that the criminal was
amusing himself with his victims.

"Then a picture of the Carstairs at-
tending a social function went out on the
telecasts. One of the witnesses of an
early pickpocket episode came to head-
quarters and identified Robert Carstairs
as the young man to whom he had seen
the victim hand over his valuables.

"That was all we'd been waiting for.

“Maybe Marly had a hunch about
what might happen, for he sent half a
dozen men to make the arrest.

“Well — he didn’t send enough. In-
side the Carstairs home, something hap-
pened to their minds. They became in-
sane — homocidally. Up to now, this has
been kept out of the newscasts. " They
killed each other. At least, they
were found dead by their own weapons.

“It was the same thing with the Car-
stairs family, only there the indications
pointed at suicide.”

Siren moaning a warning, the mono-
car swung into a brighter thoroughfare,
but it brought to Greer no feeling of es-
cape from darkness. His mind was
tight and cold. He was remembering
how his brother’s foster parents, the
Hallidanes, had died — a sordid do-
mestic tragedy — the father had mur-
dered the mother and then killed him-
self.

Suicide — a kind of signature his
brother scribbled on his crimes.

Greer understood, almost too well.
He knew the temptation to use people,
then to go a little further, then a little

further still. If he had been brought
up in his brother’s environment —

His brother had raised a whole city
against himself before he realized that
there were limits on even a power like
his. He could doubtless ■ escape from
Steelton, but there would always be that
criminal record behind him. How
much simpler if a Robert Carstairs died.

As if in agreement with that thought.
Greer nodded grimly to himself. The
story he had drawn from the uncon-
scious detective had confirmed his own
notion about his brother’s behavior pat-
terns. When his brother sought power,
he had taken control of the wealthiest
family in Steelton and had hung on
until the last possible moment. Now
that his brother was the object of a city-
wide man hunt — -

The deskman at Steelton Police
Headquarters looked up at the new-
comers. He saw the prisoner being
brought in. His eyes went wide and
stayed that way,

“Yes, we got Carstairs,” one of the
detectives told him. "We’re taking him
in to Marly.”

And they walked up the corridor, two
of them on either side of the prisoner,
two with their guns in his back.

The deskman stared after them. He'd
never really believed that they would
get Carstairs. You couldn't — not if you
know what the police did.

And they were being so casual about
it !

A little later he remembered he hadn’t
flashed Marly to let him know they were
coming.

Greer felt the tautness growing, in
muscle and mind. He sought to dispel
it, to empty his mind of thought, to
maintain only sub-conscious-level con-
trol of the four men around him. He
must avoid giving any sort of warning.

The corridor turned. He caused the
four men to walk ahead of him. They
quickened their pace in response to the
feeling of urgency that surged through
him.

THE MUTANT'S BROTHER

Just a little farther now, Greer told
himself, just a little farther — and then,
in the mental dark, he sensed a glowing
brightness, like a living light. It seemed
to beat against his mind in ever-
strengthening waves. It called to his
mind to leap toward it and mingle with
it. lie strove to resist that call, to take
no notice of it.

Ahead of him. the four men were
filing through a door. On it he read
“Director of Police.” Beyond it he
saw a gleaming metallic table and a
ruddy-faced, gray-haired man, with two
policemen in uniform seated beside him.

But behind them was another person.
As if in a subtly distorting mirror, Greer
looked at himself.

He had guessed right. His brother
had done the crazily logical thing that
Greer had expected.

Tonight there was a city-wide man-
hunt for his brother — and his brother
was directing it.

And now, face to face with his
brother, mind to mind, he was over-
whelmed by the thought of what they
might have meant to each other under
different circumstances, and he hesitated
too long in giving the order that he
knew must be given.

Before the men under his control
could raise their guns, they were cut
down by a deafening burst of fire from
Police Director Marly and the two
officers with him. Human flesh ex-
ploded nauseously.

Then, for a third time that night, time
seemed to crawl. Greer had flung him-
self to one side. Out of range — but
only for a moment. His turn, he knew,
was next. He sought to take control
of Marly and the other two. He might
as well have tried to control statues.
They were his brother’s puppets — not
his.

THE

He heard the rattling echoes of the
gunfire die along the corridor. He saw
a ribbon of smoke curl from the door-
way. Seconds seemed like minutes.

He could see his brother’s purposes so
clearly now, read them direct from his
mind. Control of the world. And it
would be such an easy thing. — just a
matter of getting to the men who con-
trolled it, or who were in a position to
control it, and then controlling them.

And he could have prevented it, if
only —

If only —

He struck suddenly at his brother’s
mind, to control it!

For an instant he thought he had
succeeded. Then for an instant he
thought he had failed. Mental bright-
ness surging at mental brightness, seek-
ing to extinguish. He felt a paralysis
grip his muscles, a darkness closing
down on his mind. By a supreme effort,
he fought it off.

But deadlock was all lie had wanted.

In Marly’s room, guns thundered.

Greer did not need to look. He felt
his brother's mind die.

In resisting Greer’s mental assault,
his brother had been compelled to free
his puppets.

Dully, Greer wondered if he ought
to die, too. He, too, was a dangerous
monster. Tonight he had killed a harm-
less man and been the cause of death
for four others.

And he had destroyed the only one
of his kind in the wide world, the only
one with whom he could speak from
mind to mind and be answered. Dark-
ness now. Mental darkness unending.

From Marly’s room came a muffled
exclamation of crazy amazement. Greer
Canarvon realized that if he wished to
escape, he must act quickly.

He turned to meet his lonely destiny.
END.

The End of the
Rocket Society

by Willy Ley

The inside history of the most active rocket society
in the world fold by the vice president — an item
of real interest to science-fiction. Ley shows
why no further rocket society work is practical.

I now know what I always felt in-
dined to suspect: namely, that the au-
thors of mystery stories are not fully
satisfied with the mere tracing of clues
for crimes which they themselves
thought up in the first place. I al-
ways believed that they would also be
interested in real mysteries of one sort
or another. Now I know they are.
Anthony Boucher proved it to me, all
unwittingly, of course.

A few weeks ago he wrote me a
letter, asking whether the German
Rocket Society found its end when Hit-
ler came to power and, if so, how. Or
whether the Nazis "co-ordinated” that
society and with what results. It seems
that what he probably thought of as
“The Mystery of the Vanishing Rocket
Society” had prompted him to look up
the available literature and that he failed
to find a satisfactory answer. This fail-
ure does not surprise me at all, the ac-
counts that can be found in print are
rather garbled — as are most of the ac-
counts of the experimental work done
by that society — and have never told the
whole story in detail.

Now Boucher is urging me to do so,
and John Campbell agreed to furnish
the type and the space for this purpose.
So here’s the story — but there is no
other way of telling it than to begin
at the beginning.

The German Rocket Society was
founded in Breslau, Germany, in June
1927. The place was the back room
of a small tavern and there were only a
few people present, engineers, high-
school teachers and such. I believe that
according to German law the minimum
number of people who can legally found
a society is seven ; if that number was
exceeded in that session it was exceeded
only by one or two. Only one man in
the whole assembly was known by name
to the public: Max Valier who was the
author of a well-selling volume on as-
tronomy, written for the public. He
also was the author of a thin book on
space travel, entitled “Der V or stoss in
den Weltenraum ” — the title can be
translated only approximately as “At-
tacking Interplanetary Space” — which
was a more or less popular edition of

THE END OF THE ROCKET SOCIETY

another book by Professor Hermann
Oberth.* Oberth's book, incidentally,
was not a heavy volume either, com-
prising only about eighty printed pages,
but sixty of them consisting solely of
mathematical derivations.

One of those present at that meeting,
a man by the name of Johannes Wink-
ler. agreed to accept the presidency of
that society and promised to publish a
small monthly magazine devoted to the
same problem as the society itself and
slated to act as a mouthpiece for the
society. This monthly magazine, en-
titled Die Rakete — The Rocket — actu-
ally was published immediately after-
ward and appeared regularly until De-
cember 1929.

The official name of the society was
not the equivalent of the term German
Rocket Society — that term was made
up later on for the purpose of facilitat-
ing foreign correspondence, especially
with English-speaking countries. The
official name was Vcrcin fur Raitm-
schiffahrt — Society for Space Travel —
and Winkler undertook the task of reg-
istering it with the Court of Breslau.
This was essential for business pur-
poses ; only a society registered with a
court of law could act in a legal sense,
that fact was indicated by adding the
letters e.V. to the name of a society.
It means eingetragener Vereitt, or “reg-
istered society" and the meaning of the
e.V. is the same as that of Inc. in this
country.

When Winkler appeared in court he
was told that there was an objection,
the word Raumscliiffahrt — space travel
— was no defined in any dictionary,
therefore the public would be unable
to judge the purpose of the society,
therefore et cetera, et cetera. But the
court finally relented, new inventions
did bring new words with them which
would need time to get into encyclo-
pedias and dictionaries, it was only re-
quested that the document of incorpora-
tion itself had to define the name.

♦Pronounced: Obert, with the accent on the
lrst syllable.

That done, Winkler had only one
worry left and that was what he was
to do with his society after it had finally
been incorporated. He and Valier
agreed that their first task was to as-
semble all the names of people known to
a — more or less numerous — interested
public as space travel enthusiasts. Thus
Valier wrote me a letter asking me to
join, Winkler wrote to Professor Oberth
and to many others. And they all
joined.

The idea of space travel had found a
legal and so-to-speak official platform
from which to speak. Everything
seemed and was fine, some two months
after foundation the society had four
hundred members. All this, of course,
did not precisely spring out from thin
air — the idea itself had a sizable history
before the society was founded.

The idea had started much farther
back, and it is purely a question of taste
which date you like to accept. The
first stories about flights to the Moon
were written in classical times ; they
may be termed the germ of the idea.
I personally do not accept them, though,
because flight through the air and the
crossing of interplanetary space were
believed to be the same then. I would
be more inclined to accept the “Son v-
n in in." the posthumous opus of the
great Johannes Kepler, as the germ of
the idea. Kepler knew that the atmos-
phere has an upper limit and that there
are many thousands of miles of empty
space between our atmosphere and the
Moon. But Kepler did not even attempt
to describe a method which would make
such a trip possible. Cyrano de Berg-
erac did describe several “methods,” one
of them a series of powerful sky rock-
ets, but I take this to be accidental.
You might name Sir Isaac Newton,
who discovered the action-reaction law
and is said to have stated that this law
would permit movement in empty space
— this statement cannot be found in
his writings, however, it is only tra-
dition — or you might name the Dutch-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

man Jacob Willem s’Gravesande who
in the second volume of his book
“Physica elcmcnta mathematica” — 1721
— described and pictured a model
steam-reaction engine, mounted on a
toy car. Or you may be in favor of the
Englishman Percy Greg or the French-
man Achille Eyraud; both wrote inter-
planetary novels in the ’50s of the last
century and both knew that space flight
and flight was liot the same. Percy
Greg had his hero travel to Mars in
a ship powered by apergy — reversed
gravity— while Achille Eyraud had his
hero travel to Venus in a vessel driven
by a motcur a reaction. And I would
consider naming Jules Verne as the
father of space flight, even though since
1926 I am constantly troubled by the
existence of his two novels and the
constant question of whether it is "pos-
sible to build a gun large enough to
shoot a rocket to the Moon.” Hut, Jules
Verne did think up a way of getting his
men to the Moon and lie deserves special
praise for getting all his, formula
straight — with the aid of the Mathe-
matical Institute of the French Astro-
nomical Society. I would not name
If. G. Wells because he imitated Jules
Verne’s method in one of the novels
and “invented” the physically impos-
sible “cavorite” for the other. Hut
his German competitor of the same
period, the professor of mathematics
Kurd Lasswitz is a possibility. I.ass-
witz also used something like “cavorite,”
but did not get mixed up between ac-
celeration and velocity, inertia and
weight and developed a very thorough
theory of accelerating and maneuvering
in space by means of the reaction of
specially designed guns.

But there can be little doubt that the
idea was actually born during the last
decade of the nineteenth century. On
the 27th of May, 1891, the inventor
Hermann Ganswindt delivered a lec-
ture on airships in Berlin; forty years
later lie showed me newspaper reviews
of Ins lecture and they stated that he
had informed his audience that even

the best airship or airplane — Gans-
windt is one of the early, and unsuccess-
ful, inventors of the helicopter — could
not fly to another planet, but that that
was not impossible either, if the reac-
tions from successive explosions of say
dynamite were utilized. And while Gans-
windt lectured in Berlin, lectures inter-
spersed with piano recitals of Chopin
and Bach pieces — he was a self-taught
pianist — a young schoolmaster in Ka-
luga in Russia attacked the same prob-
lem. Ganswindt attacked it with rhet-
orics, the schoolmaster Konstantin
Edouardovitch Ziolkovsky attacked it
with mathematics. He found that a re-
action flight to the Moon was theo-
retically possible and he wrote a long
paper, “Rakyetta v kosmcetchcsskoye
prostranstvo” — “Rocket into Cosmic
Space”— which was published in 1903 in
the Russian journal Scientific Rcznczv.
It was discussed with heat and fervor,
and then forgotten. Nobody outside of
Russia ever read it; and- — I am quoting
from a letter Ziolkowsky wrote me many
years later— “nobody inside of Russia
remembered it for long.” This paper,
as well as the bigger one of 1911 — ' "Ex-
ploration of Interplanetary Space By
Means of Reaction' Vessels” — were re-
printed at Kaluga in 1924 and 1926 — -
but still nobody outside of Russia ever
saw them. 5 Ziolkovsky mailed me
copies, I was one of three people in
Germany, plus two libraries, who bad
them.

I think we should give the crown to
Ziolkovsky.

In 1919 R. H. Goddard published his
“A Method of Reaching Extreme Alti-
tudes,” the first of the modern Itooks
on rocket possibilities. But it remained
unknown in Europe, Professor Obcrth
even did not hear alxmt it until he had
published his own work. That was in
1923, some eighty printed pages, as
stated lie fore, representing the thought
of nine years. He told me himself
that the publishing house, a large firm
devoted exclusively to technical books.

THE END OF THE ROCKET SOCIETY

The VfR rochet motor testing set-up.

would publish the work only if part of
the expenses of printing were paid by
the author. O berth was not quite thirty
years of age then, the book ate up all
of his savings. But the first small edi-
tion was sold within a few weeks. One
who bought it then was Max V alier
and he decided that Obertlvs ideas
should be made known also to people
who could not read the purely mathe-
matical original work. Without know-
ing about the parallel, Valier wanted to
rewrite O berth in the same manner
s’Gravesande had rewritten Newton.
And he failed in precisely the same
manner as s’Gravesande. The latter
did not write popular simply because
he wrote Latin and Valier did not write
popular all the way through because
he tried to drive home points by mathe-
matical proof. When I read Valier's
book I perceived immediately that it
was not popular and sat down to sim-
plify Valier's book in turn. Then I
AST— SX

saw that he had not even interpreted
Oberth correctly all the time — that way
I wrote my first book which was pub-
lished in 1926.

And for that reason I was invited
to join the Vercin fiir Raumschiffahrt
e.V. a year later. At that time T was
a young man just twenty years of age,
busy with wresting a living from a
kind of permanent economic depression
and studying zoology, some paleontology
and a little astronomy at night, the
typical poor working student of that
period. To tell the truth : the border
lines of those sciences interested me
more than the actual material. I found
the history of zoology more fascinat-
ing than zoology itself, and all through
the astronomical lectures I wondered
about Svante Arrhenius' theory of liv-
ing spores traveling through space. If
one could only go to other planets and
check on that theory. But propellers
do not bite in a vacuum and gravityless

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

substances violated half a dozen well-
established laws of physics.

Do you see how the books by Oberth
and Valier fitted in? In the meantime
the city architect of the city of Essen
on the Ruhr, Dr. Walter Hohntann,
had published another book on the same
problem, also a purely mathematical
treatise— -so much so that the first edi-
tion of fifteen hundred copies was never
completely sold — and also positive in its
final answers. So I decided on a course
of action for myself and safe for the
final hoped-for results I was successful.
My plan was about as follows: First,
get all the people who had contributed
ideas together and make them write a
book in collaboration. A readable book
which would convince a great number
of people, not precisely the man in the
street, maybe, but engineers, teachers,
the higher-ups in the civil service, and
so on. Then get the readers to join
the now-incorporated society which I’m
going to call VfR "hereinafter.” Make
them pay dues. And give the money to
Oberth for experimental work.

Winkler of the VfR agreed with at
least the latter half of my plan. The
publisher of my small popular book,
and Oberth, Dr. Hohmann, Max Valier
and one Dr. Leo von Hoefft of Vienna,
who had written a few articles in Aus-
trian magazines, agreed with the first
half of it and began to sit down and
write. 1 planned to get Robert H.
Goddard, too, as a contributor, but he
did not answer. The book appeared in
May 1928. 1 could do better now as an
editor, but it was not bad. It even
sold well in spite of the high price, the
equivalent of five dollars. And the
VfR got new members — I had mean-
while been made vice president and had
joined with Winkler in the editorship
of The Rocket.

But meanwhile a lot of other things
had happened. Privy Councilor Lorenz
of Danzig had attacked Oberth in a
high-handed and vicious manner. He
had proved elaborately that a rocket,

Fig. 1. The Oberth rocket, made for,
Dr. Oberth by UFA Films Inc., as
part oj the publicity campaign for the
“Girl in the Moon” movie.

in order to attain escape velocity with
present-day fuels would have to carry
about twenty times its own weight in
fuel. Ergo: impossible, the escape ve-
locity of about eight miles per second
could not be attained, unless atomic
power were discovered first.

There was a big meeting of the Ger-
man Aeronautical Society in Danzig
soon after this attack had been launched.
The meeting took place in May 1928
— the first copies of the big co-opera-
tive book arrived while sessions were
going on — and the program committee
had felt obliged to let Lorenz speak

THE END OF THE ROCKET SOCIETY

about his then current pet theory, that
Oberth was wrong. But it had invited
Oberth, too. Oberth answered with a
very short lecture that had nothing to
do with the criticism. Then he pointed
out in three sentences that he had ar-
rived at the same result as Lorenz, that
Lorenz could have found that result in
his, Oberth’s, book if he had taken the
trouble to read it about halfway through
and that he, of course, could not help it
if Professor Lorenz refused to believe
that an aluminum container could be
filled with twenty times its own weight
in water. Starting on that day Lorenz
restricted himself to his original themes
where he was an authority.

After that meeting Oberth, Mrs.
Oberth and I had dinner together, and
so for every day left of his vacation.
We parted as friends and Oberth went
back to Mediash in Transylvania. He
is a Transylvanian German by birth,
always lived there and missed no oppor-
tunity to assert that a man can be happy
only in a small town — accent on small
— in Transylvania. Politically he was
an Austrian subject at first, then was
made a Rumanian by the peace treaty.
Being an awful linguist the obligation
to teach in Rumanian hit him as hard
as, say, the sentence to live in a city of
more than one hundred thousand in-
habitants.

Meanwhile, as I said, a lot of things
had happened.

Meanwhile Max Valier had some-
how managed to interest the owner of
a then large automobile factory, Fritz
von Opel, who would not be flattered
by anything as much as by hearing him-
self referred to as the German Henry
Ford. I may add here that Henry Ford
was then regarded in Germany as the
most outstanding man in all history,
as the Man of the Future, and it is no
accident that the Master of Metropolis
• — in the Fritz Lang film “Metropolis”
was made to look like Ford.

Fritz von Opel listened to Valier
and saw an opportunity for purchasing

unlimited publicity with what was for
him small change. Valier and von Opel
got together on the construction of
rocket cars, using large powder rockets
manufactured by Friedrich Wilhelm
Sander who owned a pyrotechnic fac-
tory which made life-saving rockets and
signal rockets for the German navy.
The first rocket car ran on von Opel’s
racing track on March 12, 1928. The
publicity was enormous and Oberth,
Winkler, I and the whole VfR gnashed
our collective teeth. For more than a
year we had concentrated on explain-
ing that our proposed space rockets had
only the name and the principle in com-
mon with the traditional powder-fueled
sky rockets, we had gone to extreme
lengths to explain the numerous advan-
ages of liquid-fuel rockets to anybody
who would listen — and Valier went and
made publicity for von Opel with com-
mercial powder rockets!

I used the excuse that Valier, being
busy with his rocket cars, had missed
the last deadline for the book to let it
appear without his contribution. He was
all but expelled from the VfR, but the
harm was done. Later he told me that
von Opel had not even paid him well
for his service and that he had to accept
a car at full price as part of the payment
— I do not know whether that is true,
but I feel inclined to believe it.

The result was that there were three
groups suddenly, one with ideas and
scientific proof but without money, the
VfR, and two with money who played
with powder rockets. The two latter
were von Opel who continued alone
and with hired help after Valier had
resigned in a huff and Valier who had
found another industrial firm which also
wanted some inexpensive rocket pub-
licity.

Oberth was approached by numerous
promoters, all asking just forty or fifty
percent of the money they would get for
him and all ready to promise impossible
things to investors. Oberth fell for one
of these schemes, he was not hit too

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

hard by the consequences, and then
remained cautiously aloof.

Meanwhile, to round out the pic-
ture, the French pioneer aviator Robert
Esnault-Pelterie had proved the pos-
sibility of space travel all over again
during a meeting of the Societe Astro-
nomique de France and had published
the lecture in book form.* He had
also found a financier, a banker in Paris
by the name of Andre Hirsch. To-
gether they had inaugurated an annual
Prize for Astronautics, promising to
give five thousand francs for the work,
theoretical or experimental, which
would be judged best at the end of the
year, “best”" in the sense of constitut-
ing the biggest advance of the idea of
space travel.

Meanwhile Professor Nikolai A. Ry-
nin of Leningrad had started writing
a nine-volume encyclopedia on rockets
and space travel, a now exceedingly
rare work. The first volume was pub-
lished in the fall of 1928, the last in
1932.

Meanwhile Johannes Winkler had
taken another job of which he told noth-
ing at the time. He only stated that
it was confidential and that it would
be inopportune for him to continue as
president of the VfR. The members
should elect Professor Oberth who, after
all, was the father of the idea. When
the time came around the members did
elect Oberth as president while I was
re-elected as vice president. I did most
of the work, consequently the headquar-
ters of the society were transferred to
Berlin — actually, not legally.

And meanwhile Fritz Lang had read
those books on space travel. Fritz
Lang had the unique distinction of hav-
ing directed some six or seven movies at
that time, each one of them a howling
success. In the popular mind “the
movies” and Fritz Lang were the same.
Fritz Lang had just finished “Metropo-

*L’ Exploration par fusees de laa ir$s haute at-
mosphere et la possibilite des voyages inter -
planetatres. Published in 1828, revised and re-
written as L’ Astro nautique in 1930,

fis” then and was working on “The
Spy”* — both written as novels by his
wife, Thea von Harbou. He tossed
the spaceship idea at her, Oberth’s work
and my book — the big one, entitled
"Die Moglichkeit der Weltraumfahrt,”
— "The Possibility of Interplanetary
Travel” — and w r anted another movie.
Thea von Harbou obliged, the novel
" Frau im Mond ” — “The Girl in the
Moon” — was written, Lang began to
worry about the technical 'details of the
film. It was released October 1 5, 1929,
and ran in this country under the title
"By Rocket to the Moon.” It was
the last big German silent, already
fighting the then-incoming talkies.

Fritz Lang did not w r ant to make
scientific mistakes, he looked around
for an advisor. Max Valier, who some-
how had heard of it offered his services
and was rejected. Finally Lang wired
to Oberth in Mediash. Oberth arrived
with an enormous cold and even before
seeing Lang he asserted that he would
not sacrifice scientific accuracy under
any circumstances. He had to yield on
a few points, of course. Dramatic sus-
pense required that the pilot of the
spaceship would have to go through an
enormous struggle against acceleration
to shut off the power when the space-
ship had reached escape velocity. Ac-
tually that would be done by an elec-
tric contact, regardless of whether the
pilot is conscious or not, no matter
whether he is in a faint, drunk, dead
or absent. The main point was that the
actors had to walk around on the
“moon” without spacesuits. That was
necessary; it was still a silent movie
and facial expressions had to be visible.

Oberth asserted that he would not
yield even before seeing Lang, and even
before he did see him — Lang will like
this when he reads it now — I began to
needle Oberth. “Professor, there are
the movies, not just the movies even,

•It amused me greatly last year to hear Rob-
ert Heinlein tell Fritz Lang about a silent Ger-
man movie he had seen when a naval cadet, a
movie which stuck in hie memory ever since, a
movie entitled "The Spy.”

THE END OF THE ROCKET SOCIETY

Lang himself. Money doesn’t matter
here, this is where you can get the cash
to transform your formulas into re-
ality.”

It woufcf have worked save for some
minor factors. It is hard to say which
one was most important, so I’ll just
enumerate them without trying to make
their order a sequence of importance.
One was the time factor. I did not
know, and Oberth knew it even less,
that most of the work on a movie is done
when the actual filming begins. And
Oberth had been called at about that
time. That anything happened at all
was due mainly to the fact that Lang
had nursed similar thoughts and that
he was willing to contribute out of his
own pocket. He did, giving at least
as much as the company. At about
the time when the last scenes were
filmed Oberth began to think about the
experiments to be done. He had to
hurry; the UFA Film, Inc., wanted
free publicity for the movie for its
money, a good-sized experimental rocket
should be launched at the day of the
premiere — some ten or twelve weeks
hence.

That in itself was an impossibility,
the “making of inventions in time for

deadlines," as Oberth put it bitterly
later on. The other impossibility was
Herr Professor Hermann Oberth him-
self.

I find it difficult to describe the man
simply because he is difficult to describe.
First of all I must say that I still like
him, in spite of everything, in spite
even of the fact that he began to dis-
cover “Nordic superiority” in 1934. I
don’t take this any too seriously — it is
just one more example of the amazing
number of heterogenous elements in one
man. As a thinker about rocket per-
formance, rocket theory and the theory
of space flight he was a very great man.
I do not hesitate for one second to say
that in that respect he is greater than
K. E. Ziolkovsky, N. A. Rynin, Robert
Esnault-Pelterie and R. LI. Goddard
all rolled into one and multiplied by
five. This sharpness of mind in one
single respect was the man — every-
thing else about him was incidental and
accidental — Mother Nature had to add
some odds and ends to this to make him
biologically complete, and she picked
any odd piece that came handy.

I am not speaking about his physical
appearance, he was a good-looking, very
slender and somewhat lanky man with

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

very black hair and very dark eyes. I
am referring to his mental make-up
which was strange indeed. He was pri-
marily a mathematician and physicist
with some courses in astronomy thrown
in. Primarily, I should have said, he
was a mathematician. At the same time
he dabbled in occultism ; I have read
a typescript of four hundred pages en-
titled “The Coming Seven Hundred
Years,” created by autohypnosis in front
of a freshly fallen meteorite. The trance
yielded an odd story of a man who be-
came dictator of the earth — benevolent
dictator — by inventing an absolutely ir-
resistible weapon. That first dictator
created unity of humanity by abolish-
ing all churches, but not religion, and
thereafter there was steady, rapid and
peaceful progress. The trance also
promised that Oberth would meet this
man before he became The Dictator.

You may say that it does not matter
how he amused himself in his spare
time, but Oberth was deadly serious
about his vision and was very angry that
his publisher refused to publish that
manuscript because it would reflect un-
favorably on his other work.

As I stated before, Oberth was born
in Transylvania, a German colony
wedged in between Rumania and Hun-
gary. Both his parents were Germans,
German was the only language Oberth
could speak fluently and he thought of
himself as a German. But he disliked
the Germans of the Reich, especially
the Berliners who “had no soul and
were German-speaking Americans,
hunting money all the time,” and he
distrusted Germany, stating that it was
potentially an aggressor nation. That
did not prevent him from joining the
Nationalsosialistische Selbsthilfe — Na-
tional Socialist Self-defense — in 1934,
one of the Nazi’s fifth-column organiza-
tions in the Balkans — not realizing that
that potential agressordom had then be-
come actual and not realizing that the
Transylvanian Germans were under —
journalistic and legal — Rumanian fire

just because they were Nazis. How-
ever, he refused to be anti-Semitic.

Politically a Rumanian he disliked
the Rumanians, possibly with good rea-
son, but was all in favor of Rumania,
majnly because it was a small country.
Besides he greatly admired King Carol
and it is a matter of record that King
Carol evinced very great interest in
Oberth’s work. As a matter of fact
the king was almost ready to join the
VfR, his hesitation was converted into
a negative decision because Oberth ad-
vised against it — although he — Oberth
— gave me all the facts that made him
do that I still am not able to follow his
strange logic in that case.

Thus Oberth, admirer of small towns
and small countries, respected in his

THE END OF THE ROCKET SOCIETY

small town and used to the company of
small-town and country intellectuals,
some of them semiretired scientists with
good names, suddenly found himself in
a city of four and one half million peo-
ple who spoke a strange and to him
ultrarapid dialect. He found himself
on a movie lot, in the company of film
stars and directors, big financiers, im-
portant and very worldly scientists and
chairmen of huge foundations, beset
by newspaper columnists with impos-
ing names. And he found himself in
charge of a hurry-up engineering job
with no practical experience to fall back
on. He probably needed most of his
energy to show that he was not bewil-
dered by all this.

And he could not understand peo-
ple.

He wanted his bicycle to which he
was used — and could not understand
why one could not visit the director of
a research foundation that way but was
to use the subway or a taxi. He wanted
to be friendly and tried to demonstrate
his friendly feelings by taking a long, thin
cigar from his vest pocket and a clasp
knife, cutting the cigar in half and offer-
ing one half to the Herr Geheimrat.
(I have seen it myself.) The confer-
ence then lasted ten minutes and an im-
portant opportunity was muffed for all
time. And he grew very angry with
me because I tried to correct him, to
advise him what to do and what not to
do.

So Oberth had to build a rocket in
a hurry. He knew that he was no en-
gineer and that he needed one. He
could have asked any one of innumer-
able people he knew for an able assist-
ant, he could have phoned one of the
specialized employment agencies — but
he put a classified ad into one or sev-
eral newspapers. Several men re-
sponded, capable men, no doubt, and
Oberth had to make a choice. There
was one of the applicants whose ap-
pearance struck him like lightning.
This was the man he had seen in that
meteorite-inspired vision. He even

bore that scar on his forehead, Oberth
did not know that it was a result of reck-
less driving.

That individual was a small man with
a hard face, a Hitler-voiced unemployed
engineer, carefully dressed and with
military posture. “Name is Rudolf
Nebel, diploma-ed engineer, member of
the oldest Bavarian student corps,
World War combat pilot, with pilot’s
license and rank of lieutenant, with
eleven enemy planes to my credit.”

He was hired immediately.

I may add right here that Nebel told
me himself later on that he had been
graduated in a hurry during the war
because he had volunteered for the air
force and that after the war he had
never worked as an engineer but as a
kind of salesman for mechanical kitchen
gadgets. Since jobs were almost im-
possible to find, all this was probably not
his fault, but I often discovered later
that I knew more about problems in his
field than he did.

Oberth found himself another assist-
ant whose name had come to his atten-
tion because it had been the by-line to
a brilliant article in an aviation maga-
zine. Via the editor of the magazine
Oberth got hold of the writer, a Rus-
sian aviation student by the name of
Alexander Borissovitch Shershevsky.
Shershevsky had been sent to Germany
to study gliders, but overstayed his
kommandirovka and dared not go home
again. But he was genuinely in favor
of the Soviet government, not a “White
Russian” — he was a refugee by acci-
dent.

Those three, the theorist who longed
for the fresh mountain air of Mediash,
the professed militarist Nebel and the
Bolshevist Shershevsky worked to-
gether, or tried to. Shershevsky did not
adore work overly much, Nebel was
willing to work and waited for orders,
and Oberth was not quite certain where
he should start.

Oberth did not build a rocket to be
used at a certain date — he researched.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Some opponents had said that liquid
oxygen and a fuel, say gasoline, would
never burn together but would always
explode. Oberth made experiments to
show that they would burn. He did
prove his point and it has been proved
five hundred times over again since.
Unfortunately he did have an explo-
sion during one of the first experiments ;
that explosion came close to ruining
his eyesight in one eye and laid him up
for several days. Oberth spent some
time figuring out a theoretically ideal
combustion chamber, the so-called
Kegclduse, and had it built somewhere.
He ordered, and after a long delay got,
an expensive high-speed gyroscope
which was never used. He moaned that
he could not obtain methane easily —
“we have it commercially pure home
in Mediash from gas wells” — and that
gasoline had to be used, The UFA
announced that his rocket would rise
to seventy kilometers, say forty-five
miles. Oberth drew up plans for a
rocket designed along the lines of a
model theoretically discussed in his book
— in between Shershevsky did some il-
lustrations for that book, third edition,
dedicated to Fritz Lang, and spent four
days doing them, while any run-of-the-
mill draftsman could have done them in
six hours — and wasted Nebel’s and a
few other people’s time making experi-
ments with parachute releases which,
incidentally, turned out well.

His program was not quite as mud-
dled as it may appear from that descrip-
tion, but it was a program for about
a year of work, with three or four
months added for safety’s sake, and he
had five weeks left. Meanwhile the
public waited for the Oberth rocket
with an enthusiasm that is incredible
even in retrospect. Even a photograph
of the spot on the Baltic coast rented
for the experiment sold well as a pic-
ture postcard. Then Oberth realized,
or was made to realize, that time was
short and changed all his plans. He de-
signed a so-called primitive demonstra-
tion model, consisting of a metal tube

with several sticks of coal in it, sur-
rounded by liquid oxygen and dimen-
sioned in such a way that the combus-
tion of five inches of coal would use up
just five inches of oxygen level. The
coal sticks were to burn down from
the top, the gases were to be exhausted
through a system of nozzles to provide
reaction. Oberth waved sheets of cal-
culations proving that his proportions
were correct. I explained the thing
to eager reporters as well as I could,
feeling awfully doubtful about twenty
different points. Shershevsky praised
the venture as "in the Bolshevist spirit
of daring.” Nebel muttered something
about building a small model first, of
“minimum size possible.”

Oberth made more experiments,
failed to find a material that would burn
with the proper speed and was on the
verge of a nervous breakdown. One
night Shershevsky called me up, an-
nouncing laconically, “He ran away !”

It was incredible, but it was true.
However, he came back a week or so
later, offering no explanation for his
disappearance. The rocket ascent was
then officially postponed and the movie
was launched with all the trimmings of
first-night traditions. Nothing hap-
pened for some weeks and then Oberth
left for home, releasing a statement that
he would sue the UFA Film, Inc.

Years later, in 1934, he explained in
a letter to the new president of the
VfR, that he had not been master of
himself all through that time. He
claimed that that early explosion had
given him all the symptoms of shell
shock and that he had not completely
recovered even then, five years later.

I did not feel at all happy at that
time, even though the society’s status
looked good. According to a count in
September 1929 the VfR had eight hun-
dred seventy members, with new ones
coming in every day. But these mem-
bers wanted to know what had hap-
pened. I could not have told the true
story even if I had been completely in-

THE END OF THE ROCKET SOCIETY

formed — I wasn’t — Oberth could not
be reached for a statement, the secre-
tary of the Berlin office, Patent Attor-
ney Wurm, refused to do anything
without Oberth’s consent, the UFA
made very guarded statements that
meant nothing and the journal The
Rocket, was a mess which made every-
body angry.

This was one of Oberth’s well-meant
misadventures. Some people had writ-
ten awful nonsense about rockets and
Oberth had always wanted to reply.
Thus, when Winkler — still hidden away
in his confidential job — wrote him that
lie had to discontinue the publication of
The Rocket because of lack of funds,
Oberth promised and did give enough
money to keep it going, under condition
that lie would get one section which he
could use freely for criticism. Valier
was on his list, but he started out with
one Dr. von Hoefift in Vienna. Hoefft
hit back, Oberth ditto, personal issues
were dragged in and The Rocket, save
for the nonbelligerent section I edited,
was nasty to read. Factually, or rather
theoretically, Oberth was right, but his
articles did not sound nice. The Aus-
trian branch split into two parts. One
was von Hoefft, the other was Baron
Guido von Pirquet, secretary of the
Austrian branch, and a few others. The
Austrian branch — generally regarded a
branch although a separate society le-
gally — died soon afterward. Sherstiev-
sky got up courage to go to the Rus-
sian consulate and ask for a visa for

home. Winkler wrote me that he was
compelled to discontinue publication of
The Rocket. It was one sweet, big
melee.

Then I met Nebel accidentally one
day. He knew me and, assuming that
I did not know him, told me who he
was and what he was going to do. It
was : He was going to found a society
in order to continue the rocket experi-
ments, he was going to get somebody
to write a book to attract public atten-
tion. After he had lectured for half
an hour I managed to tell him that there
were at last half a dozen books and that
there was a society which would be able
to do something if it could only get hold
of its president. Who? Hermann
Oberth! It is still hard to believe, but
Oberth had never informed his assist-
ant either about the society nor about
the literature on the subject, save for
his own book which Nebel had not read,
after finding it too highfalutin. (He
used an equivalent Bavarian term.)
After this revelation Nebel said that he
would do something with the society
that existed. He did.

Suddenly Oberth was back, fortified
by his substantial wife. And Winkler
appeared, feeling that his employer had
cheated him — repetition of Valier and
of Oberth — and in the spirit of ven-
geance he told what he had been doing.
It turned out that his employer had
been Professor Hugo Junkers — yes,
Junkers Airplane Works. Dessau, Ger-
many — and that they had worked on

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

the theory of a stratosphere rocket
plane. In between they had launched
overloaded airplanes by means of pow-
der rockets. That experiment had been
made near Dessau as early as August
1929 and had worked — Goering’s Lujt-
ivaffc later used that method for their
heavy bombers during the Battle of
Britain. 1 may add here that soon
after my arrival in the United States
1 felt it my duty to report on these ex-
periments by writing about them in
various aviation magazines. The ar-
ticles were printed, but apparently no-
body paid much attention to that idea
with the probable exception of the Ges-
tapo.

Well, there was a meeting in Mr.
Wurm’s office. Oberth was there and
Nebel and several others, also a young
engineer by the name of Klaus Riedel
who had been a member of the VfR
for some time. Riedel became impor-
tant later on. He had a small private
income, so that he could devote all his
time to rocket work. He had a sound
practical training although he was not
too strong on theory and he had an ab-
solutely inexhaustible reservoir of good
cheer. We needed that permanent good
cheer of his very much in the days to
come.

The VfR had some money; it was
used to purchase the remains of Oberth’s
work from the UFA — at a bargain price
— and the Oberth rocket, a beautifully
streamlined seven-foot monster, was as-
sembled or the assembly paid for, I
don’t recall which. We were fairly sure
that it would not work, but it was at
least a nice showpiece. For about five
minutes everything seemed fine, except
that Oberth and Nebel shouted at each
other occasionally. But Wtirm and I
managed to get them together, Oberth
agreed to discard his rocket — but
wanted to sell it as a showpiece to a
circus home in Mediash — and Nebel's
plan to build a liquid fuel rocket of the
smallest size possible for basic tests
was adopted. Oberth made a sour face

but kept quiet. The new venture was
called Minimumrakete or, abbreviated,
Mirak. Nebel was to make a first
sketch of it while the others tried to
enlist the aid of a few semigovernmental
agencies. For example the N otgemcin-
schajt — untranslatable — a kind of foun-
dation which was to support scientific
work of any kind. It turned out that
they did not have funds as large as had
been rumored and that the funds they
had, had been pledged for archaeological
excavations somewhere in the Near
East. I suspected that they lied, and
said so, but I was assured that there
were actually no unpledged funds
around for two or three years. Pos-
sibly it was true, archaeologists had a
say in that foundation.

But another thing that could be done
was to get a certificate from the Chcm-
isch-Technische Reichsanstalt — Reich

Institute for Chemistry and Technology.
This government-sponsored institute
did some work of its own, along the
lines of the Bureau of Standards, but
was mainly busy testing inventions and
processes developed by outsiders and
testifying as to their value. If we could
get a certificate from them it would help
tremendously. Yes, they were willing,
the director, one Dr. Ritter, even or-
dered some of the institute’s mechanics
to help us conduct the test, strictly un-
officially, of course, he was not sup-
posed to spend the working time of his
men without receiving full compensa-
tion.

The Mirak, drawn up by Nebel and
patterned after a powder rocket with
liquid oxygen in the “head” and gaso-
line in the guiding stick, had been built
but did not function for some reason.
But Oberth’s Kegeldiise — “cone-noz-
zle,” a somewhat misleading term — did
and Dr. Ritter testified that it had
worked without mishap for ninety sec-
onds on July 23, 1930, and that it had
produced a constant recoil of about
seven kilograms, burning six kilograms
of liquid oxygen and one kilogram of

THE END OF THE ROCKET SOCIETY

gasoline.* It was a miracle that it
worked at all. All through the test it
poured, it had poured twenty-four hours
before and still poured twenty-four
hours later. I have never been so wet
in my life, not even when swimming —
and the test was conducted in the open.
The testing ground was a pine forest,
the tops of the trees were invisible, ob-
scured by the low-hanging clouds.

Copy of Dr. Ritter’s certificate in his
pocket Oberth went definitely “home to
Mediash,’’ thinking nasty thoughts
about everybody he had met. He as-
sured me later in his letters that all of
Berlin was a collection of cutthroats
and stated that he would never begin
experimentation again until he had com-
plete plans down to the last rivet and
bolt.

Max Valier relieved the gloomy at-
mosphere by going on the air with a
talk in which he denounced his former
work with powder rockets, and in which
he said that he was now working with
liquid fuel, just like the VfR — he was
ready for reunion. Our own feelings
were mixed, because Valier still clung
to the ridiculous idea of the rocket car;
his new vehicle had made a long but
lumbering run on April 19, 1930. I
met him for the last time in May, I
think it was the 14th or 15th of May.
Old Hermann Ganswindt was there,
too, and we all felt that the old mistakes
had been buried for good. Two days
later I found a wire on my desk when
I came home: Max Valier was dead.
The rocket motor in his car had ex-
ploded, a large steel splinter had cut
the aorta and he had bled to death in
less than fifteen minutes.

A few days later the first M Irak func-
tioned, i. e., it burned but gave no no-
ticeable recoil. Valier’s death had been
tragic not only because it had stopped
him when he was doing his first really
serious piece of work; it also had a
serious afterlude. There were cries to
outlaw rocket experimentation. We sat

*1 kilogram equals 2.2 pounds.

together rather gloomily: first the fail-
ure of the Oberth rocket to materialize
at all after a big publicity build-up, then
the shattered hopes of having Valier
back in the VfR — he had never officially
resigned — and now the looming shadow
of an unjust law. It never even became
a bill, but it influenced a decision made
mainly for financial reasons: Nebel and
Riedel left for a farm near Bernstadt —
Saxony — owned by Riedel’s grandpar-
ents to find out why the Mirak had not
worked. Wurm and I held the society
together as well as possible by way of
mimeographed information sheets and
reported progress on the Mirak. In es-
sence this is what we had to say: The
Mirak burns, but does not deliver more
than a pound or so of recoil ; the Mirak
now produces three or four pounds of
recoil; the Mirak now produces more
than its own weight, it would fly, even
if not much, if it were released. And
in September 1930: the Mirak has ex-
ploded, no harm done, a new one will be
built at once.

Nebel and Riedel returned to Berlin,
Winkler left on another “confidential
job.’’

Then two wealthy members of the
VfR revealed that they were wealthy.
One of them, by the name of Rheydt,
sent a large amount of money, one thou-
sand marks and later the same amount
The other, a manufacturer by the name
of Hugo A. Hiickel, sent only a quar-
ter of that amount, but promised five
hundred marks every month if we would
agree to send him detailed expense ac-
counts, showing precisely what his
money had been used for. He wanted
no ordinary society expenses — post-
age, stationery or so — on his account,
only purely “technological” expenses.
If Nebel did not exaggerate, Hiickel
even refused to pay subway fare, tele-
phone calls or delivery and freight
charges. To meet his demands, the so-
ciety’s funds were spent for only such
things as Hiickel would not pay for and
a campaign of “acquisition” was begun.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

It consisted of letters to manufacturers forgotten, the bad effects of the Oberth-
of things we needed, explaining what UFA publicity had worn off — the pub-
we wanted to do, why we had no money lie just said “those newspapers” — and
and asking for contributions not of had even resulted in a receptive state
money but of materials. of mind. By March 1931, we were

We got : two lathes, one drill press, ready to make the most of it,

two welding outfits, lots of small hand

tools, nuts, screws and bolts, a type- This is, I think, a good place to in-
writer and aluminum in sheets, rods, terrupt the story and to review briefly

et cetera, et cetera. Somebody — Nebel what had been accomplished up to the
or Wurm — wrote a similar letter to the end of 1930. After that an extended
tax bureau in a hilarious moment. It period of experimentation began and
worked. We did not have to pay some the founding of the Raketenflugplats
minor taxes which were legally our due indicated the beginning of that new
and the department of internal revenue period.

waived taxes on the gasoline we would When the V f R was founded in 1927,
need, which brought the price down • two primary goals were in the minds of
from about eighty cents per gallon to the founders. The first was to spread
something like thirteen cents per gal- the idea of space travel and to prove
Ion. And Nebel finally received per- that no natural law opposed this idea,
mission to use a large and partly wooded Furthermore, that the solution of this
place in the northern suburb of Reinick- engineering problem did not have to
endorf as a proving ground. That wait for new inventions of a remote
place, called later Raketenflugplats — future but that the job, though admit-
rocket flying field or rocket airdrome — tedly big, tedious, expensive and even
belonged to the City of Berlin, but it dangerous to a certain extent, could be
had some buildings on it that were un- started right then and there. The see-
der the jurisdiction of the Reich De- ond goal had been to do preliminary ex-
fense Ministry. During World War I perimental work,
it had been an ammunition dump ; then, By 1930 the first goal was accom-
in 1930, it was just a piece of land with plished, the leading men of the society
securely locked, empty concrete build- had proved in various writings that the
ings. We rented it for the sum of one problem was soluble and soluble with
mark per month — say four dollars per the means at the disposal of modern
year — and were allowed to use the technology, provided a sufficient amount
buildings under condition that we of time and money was made available,
cleaned them out and made no changes A great deal of confusion had been
in their structure — they had hardly any cleared up, the theoretical groundwork
windows. The cleaning job was enor- had been laid. There is nothing to be
mous, but it could be done. added to the theory for many years to

It was easy to see why nobody had come, rather nothing needs to be added
ever rented the fairly inaccessible place, for many years to come. Oberth had
It had only one poor road, was hilly also proved the most vexing of all ques-
and wooded in places. And the army tions, whether liquid oxygen and a fuel
ministry absolutely refused to permit would perform as assumed in all the
anything to be done to its precious build- mathematical work,
ings. The City of Berlin had probably Thus the founding of the proving
just forgotten about it. ground came at the proper moment;

The winter meant cleaning up, mov- it was supposed to fulfill the second goal
ing things, accumulating tools and of the society and it was founded when
equipment. The threatened law was the first was accomplished.

TO BE CONCLUDED.

One-way Trip

by Anthony Boucher

It was a pleasant conceit they had in that war -
less world. They didn't execute a criminal; they
sent him out into space on a one-way trip with no
destination. But this trip did have a destination —

Illustrated by Kolliker

PROLOGUE

"Twenty years from the discovery of
lovestonite before anyone finds a practi-
cal use for it; and it takes an artist to do
it!" Emigdio Valentines smiled the
famous smile which the gossip writers
called melancholy — or occasionally wist-
ful — but which meant nothing more than
simply a smile.

“Yeah, 1 knozv. That's swell. You
got a nice set-up for tinkering here."
Stag Hurtle glanced around indifferently
at the today literally Pacific Ocean and
at the tmdul ant dunes of sand, empty
save for his two-seater copter. “ You
got fltii out here."

"Fun?" Valentines smiled dozen at
the curious object in his hand, a mirror
in shape, but made of zvhat looked like
dark glass and surrounded zvith a com-
plex of coils and tubes. "I suppose it is
fun to do zvhat you arc fitted for — in my
case to solve an age-old problem of art
by a twenty-y car-old discarded problem
of science."

"Yeah," said Stag FI art! e. “ But that
ain't all you're fitted for, and you knozv
it. 0. K., so you paint the greatest self-

portrait ever painted. Who cares? The
people, they’ve seen your famous smile
plenty of times on the air, and that’s
enough for them. But if you’d come
back to Sollyzvood and do the sets for
S. B.’s epic on Devarupa — ”

Valentines: interrupted him with three
short sentences. “ I do not like design-
ing sets. I do not like the notion of an
epic on Devarupa. I do not like Mr.
Breakstone."

“ Hold on, Mig. Climb dozen out of
the stratosphere and be a human being.
Think of the pleasure you can give peo-
ple zvith solly sets t hat’d never see one of
your paintings. Think of — ” He lozv-
ered his voice to a seductive rasp. “ S . F>.
said in confidence, mind you, and l
shouldn’t be telling you a zvord of this,
but S. B. said he was zvilling to listen to
any reasonable proposition. And zvhen
he says reasonable, Mig , I'm telling you
he means unreasonable. How’s about
five thousand credits a zveck?"

Valentines released a button on his
gadget, turned it over, and contemplated
the other side zvith satisfaction . “No,"
he said quietly.

‘‘Six? Seven and a half?"

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Emigdio Valentines laid the mirror
down. “ It "was nice of you to drop out
to see me, H or tie. It was nice of you to
listen to my fun-and-gantes with love-
stonite. But now, if you don’t mind, I’m
going down to the cove. There’s an
effect of the sun oir the algae there at
this time of the day — ”

Stag llartle watched the departing
figure of the man "who was possibly the
world's greatest living painter and cer-
tainly its most successful. He swore to
and at himself with dull persistence for
a good five minutes.

Then idly he picked up the love-
stonite mirror and operated it as Valen-
tines had instructed hint. Nice little
gadget. Clever technician lost in that
painter. Futile sort of gag. Nothing
commercial, but—

Stag Hartle opened his mouth wide
and shut it again firmly. He carried the
mirror out into the bright sunlight of
late afternoon.

When he came back into the house,
there was a grin of satisfaction on his
face, it was hard to keep his eyes off

the charred hole in the "wooden porch
outside.

He < worked quickly. From his vest
pocket he took that convenient clip-on
cylinder "which looked like a stylus, but
unscrewed to reveal a stick of paraderm.
He thrust it under his armpit and held it
there until body heat had softened it.
Then he carefully coated the inside of his
fingers and the palms of his hands. He
allowed it to dry and then flexed his fin-
gers experimentally. The cords stood
out in his powerfully "wiry zvrists.

He thought of historical sollics and
the great convenience of knives and pis-
tols. But no matter how Devarupian
the zvorld, a man could still kill if he
had strong hands and no fear of a one-
way trip.

Emigdio Valentines: added one more
flick of his deft brush and then realised
that the perfect moment had passed.
Only one sixth of an hour out of the
twenty-four when the light in this spot
zvas exactly as it had been that day zvhen
he had halted transfixed and fell that

ONE-WAY TRIP

strange griping of his boivels which
meant “This is it!”

He could fill the rest of his time satis-
factorily enough. There had been the
weeks of delightfully restful research on
the lovestoniie mirror, and now there lay
ahead of him many more weeks, by no
means restful, to be devoted to the object
for which he had contrived the gadget —
a perfect self-portrait.

He smiled, and smiled at himself for
smiling. How fortunate, in all due mod-
esty, is the artist who is a worthy subject
for his own brush!.. He knew that in a
way he was beautiful. He knew, and
found a bitter sort of pleasure in the
knowledge, that a girl’s bedroom was far
more apt to be adorned by a color photo
of himself than by a reprolith of one of
his paintings.

Well, this would combine the two ap-
peals — his magnum opus. Though if
ever he could finish this composition of
rock and algae and water and sun —

Where he stood he could see nothing
that was not a part of nature save him-
self, his palette and his easel. It might
have been a scene out of the long-dead
past. Cezanne, say, or some other old
master might have stood thus in the sun
back in those dim days when the advance
of science was beginning with its little
creeps. Painting is something apart
from progress. He knew that he could
never catch the sun as Cezanne had. He
knew that not he, nor any other man
living, could approach the clarity of
Vermeer or the chiaroscuro of Rem-
brandt. He could make an overnight
jaunt to the Moon if he wished, but he
could not capture in paint the soul of
Devarupa as El Greco had captured that ■
of St. Francis. Art did not necessarily
progress with progress.

And yet the loves Ionite mirror might
be the first true contribution of science
to painting. He smiled, that smile that
was not intentionally either melancholy
or wistful, and started across the sand to
his death.

A tiny five-meter rocket flashed past
the window of the stratoliner.

“Poor devil,” the girl sighed.

Gan Garrett blessed the poor devil,
whoever he was and whatever he’d done.
For an hour he had been trying to think
of some way of opening a conversation
with his black-haired, blue-eyed travel-
ing companion.

“I know,” he agreed sympathetically.

“Living death,” the girl went on.
“Premature burial, like that funny ob-
session of horror you get in nineteenth
century writers. That rocket shooting
out, headed no place forever — ”

“But what other solution is there?”
Garrett asked. “If no one may kill, cer-
tainly the State may not. We have
abandoned the collective mania of capi-
tal punishment as thoroughly as that of
war. How else would Devarupa have
had us treat those who were formerly
thought fit to be executed ?”

“Segregation?” the girl ventured hesi-
tantly.

“If you recall your history classes,
that didn’t work so well. Remember the
Revolt of the Segregated in 73? When
you mass together all those who are un-
developed enough to wish to kill — ”

The girl’s eyes stared out into space,
following the now invisible course of
the one-way trip. “You’re right, of
course. It’s the -only way. But I still
say, ‘Poor devil.’ You’re headed for
Solly wood ?”

Garrett nodded.

“Actor?”

“Hardly. Technical expert for Mr.
Breakstone’s epic on Devarupa. I’m an
historian, not unknown in my field, I
must confess. You may have read my
little work on ‘The Guilt for the War of
the Twentieth Century?’” His voice
was arid and his bearing purely aca-
demic; despite his disclaimer, he had
never done a more convincing job of
acting.

There had been nothing dry or aca-
demic about Gan Garrett the day before

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

when he breezed into the office of the
Secretary of Allocation. “The post
office is going to raise the devil about
your requisitioning me,” he announced.
“I was just getting on the track of the
highjackers that’ve been operating on
the lunar mail rockets.’’

“That’s all right,” the secretary said
dryly. “I’ve been over your reports
with the postmaster and he agrees with
me that a subordinate can carry on from
there. And we can’t all have the serv-
ices of Gan Garrett at once.”

Garrett grinned. “Look,” he inter-
posed. “Don’t tell me how good I am.
I couldn’t take it. But what’s the new
job?”

The secretary leafed through the dos-
sier before him. "According to this,
Garrett, you made the highest rating in
the adaptability classes that the W. B. I.
school has ever seen. You also dis-
played a marked aptitude for pre-
Devarupian history.”

Garrett nodded. “I liked those old
times. I know how true Devarupa’s
ideas are, and yet there’s something
about the wanton recklessness of the old
armed days — ”

“Very well. You are going to Solly-
wood as a technical adviser on an epic
now being prepared. No one outside of
this secretariat will have the least idea
that your job is not authentic ; and you’d
better be good at it.”

“I’ll run over my library tonight and
take forty or fifty microbooks along.
My visual memory’ll see me through.
But what’s the real job?”

The secretary paused. “Garrett, do
you know anything about lovestonite ?”
Gan Garrett probed in his memory.
“Let’s see — Something about Austra-
lia. I think I remember: Scientists
working a couple of years on finding
some use for those deposits of a new clay
found in the development of central
Australia. At last this Lovestone hits
on a method of making a vitreous plastic
out of it. Everybody hepped up down
under. Great hopes of a new industry.
But nobody can find a thing to do with

the plastic. Every function it can per-
form is handled easier and cheaper by
something else. Some queer property
with light — slows it down, or some-
thing — so steady small demand from
optical and physical labs. Otherwise nil.
Is that about it ?”

The secretary smiled. “If you can do
as well as that unprepared and out of
your field, you ought to get by on your
new job. Yes, that’s the history of love-
stonite — up till last month. Then all
of a sudden a terrific demand from Cali-
fornia. Imports jump around a thou-
sand percent. The processing plant be-
comes a major industry. Of course, like
all requests for raw materials, this was
cleared through this secretariat. No
questions at first, because there’s such a
surplus of the clay there was no need for
regulation. But eventually we began to
wonder.”

Garrett whistled quietly. “Armsleg-
g'ng?”

“I don’t see how. It doesn’t seem
scientifically conceivable that lovestonite
could have any lethal powers. But there
is something wrong. We queried the
plant on what it was producing with
lovestonite. They said mirrors.”
“Mirrors?”

“I know. It doesn’t make sense. A
lovestonite mirror is possible, I suppose ;
but it would cost double anything that’s
on the market and wouldn’t work so
well. So something is wrong. And
when anything is wrong in California,
you know where to learn the secret.”
Garrett nodded. “Sollywood. The
whole State’s just a suburb to that.”
“So — ” The secretary opened a

drawer and took out a small and grace-
fully carved plesiosaurus. At the top of
the delicately curving neck was a gold
collar from which a small chain ran.
“You never wear jewelry on your identi-
fication bracelet, do you ?”

Garrett shook his head. “Function
where function belongs. No trimmings.”
"But you’ll wear this. It’s by Kubi-
cek, one of his best, I think. He says
lovestonite is a surprisingly good vehicle

ONE-WAY TRIP

for carving. It might help to start con-
versations. Beyond that, you’re on your
own. No instructions but these: Do a
good job as technical adviser, and find
out what’s going on in California.”

The head of the plesiosaur was typical
Kubicek. It had, not the anthropomor-
phic cuteness of gift-shop animals, but a
prehistoric richness of reptilian knowl-
edge and cynicism. “Between us,” said
Gan Garrett, “we’ll find out all there is
to know. And I hopej’ he added, “that
it is armslegging.”

The girl was looking at his mascot
now. “That’s a nice thing. Kubicek,
isn’t it ? I usually somehow don’t think
much of men who wear jewelry on their
identification bracelets, but that’s such a
lovely swizard.”

“A what?”

“That’s what I used to call a plesio-
saur when I saw pictures of them when
I was little. They looked like part swan
and part lizard, so I called them swiz-
ards. But what’s it made out of ? That
isn’t a natural stone, and it doesn’t look
like any of the usual carving plastics.”
“It’s lovestonite.”

“Oh,” said the girl.

“Odd stuff,” Garrett went on. “Not
much use for it ordinarily.”

“Isn’t there ?” There was an odd tone
of suggestion underlying her remark.

“Is there? I’d never heard of any.”

“I don’t know. . . . I’m damned if I
know,” she said with quite dispropor-
tionate vigor. Her blue eyes flashed
with puzzled irritation. “Damn love-
stonite, anyway.”

Gan Garrett held himself back. A
technical authority on history should not
be too pryingly eager with questions.

The girl changed the subject abruptly.
“So you’re an authority on the War of
the Twentieth Century? That must be
exciting, kind of. I haven’t read so
much serious history, but I know all the
Harkaway novels. It must have . . .
there was so much to living in those
days.”

Secretly Garrett almost agreed, but

AST— 6X

he replied in character. “Nonsense, my
dear girl. Those were days of poverty
and oppression, of want and terror.
Science had turned only its black mask
to us then ; the greatness of man’s intel-
lect was expended on destruction.”

“I know all that. But think how
much more it meant to be alive when you
were face to face with death.”

“No. There is nothing glamorous
about death from malnutrition, nor is
there anything colorful about being
blown to bits by a bomb.”

“Don’t be stuffy.”

“I’m not being stuffy. We invest the
past with glamour ; we always have. We
say ‘Mustn’t it have been wonderful to
be alive in the days of Elizabeth ! Or
Napoleon, or Hitler ?’ But the only good
thing about the War of the Twentieth
Century was its total badness. Only
such complete evil could have prepared
the world for the teachings of De-
varupa.”

The girl looked sobered for a mo-
ment. “I know. Devarupa was . . .
well, wonderful. But I’ve never thought
he meant peace quite like this. He must
have meant a peace that was alive — that
gave off sparks, that made music. Peace
isn’t just something to wallow in. Peace
has to be fought for.”

“You’re Irish, aren’t you ?” said Gan
Garrett dryly.

“Yes; why?”

“It takes the Hibernian to produce
that kind of statement. An Irish bull,
technically, is it not? It was an Irish
scientist on our faculty who told me that
microbes are tiny all right, but a virus is
littler than a dozen microbes.”

She laughed. “I know. I sound like
the old Irish gag about ‘There ain’t
gonna be no fightin’ here if I have to
knock the stuffin’ out of every wan of
yez.’ I know; my dialect gets mixed.
But the whole world’s mixed now — and
how is it we Irish still manage to stick
out? Still, what I said is true, even if
it does sound funny.”

“It’s been tried,” said Garrett as his-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

torian. “The Pax Romana worked that
way: Peace, ye underlings; or Rome
will crush you to the ground. But the
Empire weakened and was itself crushed,
by its own chosen means of force. Peace
has to be rooted in something deeper
than fighting.”

“Something deeper, yes. But you
need the fighting, too. If people still had
the guts to fight, we’d have a colony on
Mars by now. But they’d sooner sit on
their cushions and sew a fine seam.
Maybe the world was better when there
were weapons and — ”

“The W. B. I. still has weapons.”

“Those . . . those popguns?” The
girl’s eyes flashed, and she tossed her
black hair. “And what do you know
about the W. B. I., anyway, you . . . you
academician ?”

“Nothing, my dear,” the W. B. I.’s
most capable agent admitted gently.

“Then shut up !”

They traveled the next half hour in
silence. The ship’s windows proffered
no view but a sea of clouds. Beneath
those clouds, Garrett calculated from his
watch, lay the opulence of the reclaimed
deserts of the Southwest; a few more
minutes and —

He turned again to the girl. Her re-
action to lovestonite made it imperative
that he keep in touch with her, even if
other motives had not contributed their
share to his desire. “You live in Solly-
wood?” he ventured.

“What do you care, you historian ?”

“But do you?”

“Of course not !” she snorted. “I live
in Novosibirsk and I’m flying out here
for a beam test.”

The ship dipped down through the
clouds and emerged into rain. Fine
drops streaked the window, but far be-
low Garrett could glimpse some of the
infinite variety of locations that comprise
most of southern California, all dry and
aglow with light under their vast domes.

The girl looked out at the rain. “W el-
come to California,” she said. “And I
hope you drown.”

Gan Garrett detached his identifica-
tion plaque from its bracelet and placed
it in the slot by the imposing entrance
to Metropolis Solid Pictures, Inc. The
beam .filtered through his set of per-
forations, and the door dilated. No
query; the combination must have been
set to his perfs as soon as he was hired.

He stepped inside, apparently still in
the open air but now out of the rain.
Five moving sidewalks started off in
different directions from this entrance,
and he hesitated, studying the indicator.

A life devoted to all the works of the
W. B. I., and especially to the suppres-
sion of armslegging, had heightened the
rapidity of Garrett’s reflexes. His
movements were economical, but auto-
matic and swift. Thus, he now found
that he had, almost without knowing it,
moved his body a few centimeters to
the right and drawn what the black-
haired girl had called his “popgun.”
Stuck fast in the center of the indicator
quivered a knife.

Even Garrett could not repress a
slight shudder at the narrow squeak.
He whirled about, stooping and weaving
as he did so with that skilled technique
of his which disconcerted any but the
finest marksman. There was not a soul
in sight in this open area.

Calmly Garrett plucked and pocketed
the knife and chose the proper sidewalk.
The episode in one way had told him
nothing. Anywhere but in Sollywood
the very existence of a weapon would
have had its significance, since the care-
ful manufacturing regulations of the
Department of Allocation permit no al-
lotments of material for weapons save
those such as Garrett now held in his
hand. Even these are carefully con-
trolled, and every one that has ever been
manufactured is by now either outworn
and destroyed or on the person of a
W. B. I. man.

They are not lethal, these “popguns.”
They are compressed-gas pistols using
carbon dioxide to fire a pellet filled with
needlelike crystals of comatin, that most
powerful and instantaneous of anaes-

ONE-WAY TRIP

thetics. They are, as is inevitable in a
Devarupian world, purely a defensive
weapon.

But the makers of sollies need to give
the effect of lethal weapons in their his-
torical epics ; and they can secure per-
mission from the Department for Metal
to make plausible replicas. These weap-
ons must by strict statute be nonlethal,
blunt in the case of swords or daggers,
the barrels blocked in the case of fire-
arms; and rendering them lethal is an
offense earning a one-way trip. But
once the metal allocation has been se-
cured, a desperate man will take his
chance on lethalizing a prop weapon.
So here the existence of a lethal dagger
was no surprise.

He remembered stories of the past in
which detectives examined weapons for
fingerprints. They would be no help
here, either ; the criminal who neglected
to use paraderm, so much more con-
venient than gloves, had been unheard-of
for a century. The sole use of prints
was no longer criminological, but in
problems of civilian identification.

Still, he would keep the dagger; as
evidence, he told himself, hardly daring
admit that there was something consol-
ing about carrying a forbidden weapon.
For the one item of significance which
the attack revealed was this: There was
a leak somewhere. Someone in Solly-
wood knew that he was more than a
technical adviser. And that in turn
meant that the lovestonite problem was
quite as important as the secretary had
feared.

Garrett fingered the lovestonite ple-
siosaur. Swizard, that girl had called it.

Sacheverell Breakstone, the great man
of Metropolis, received Gan Garrett in
person. He did not wear the usual na-
tive costume of this district — the slack
trousers, the open shirt, and the colorful
ascot which dated back to him tradition
long before the invention of solid pic-
tures. His costume, Garrett realized,
went back even further — the woven
sheep’s wool coat, the cloth headpiece
with the rear projection, the leather leg

casings. It was a curious anachronistic
survival, but it was becoming to the
short stocky body of S. B., lending him
a certain outrageous dignity.

“Welcome to Sollywood, Garrett,” he
began. “Hear you’re the great man in
your field. Well, we’ll get on. I’m the
great man in mine, and we’ll understand
each other. And this is going to be be-
yond any doubt the greatest epic ever
beamed even by Metropolis. Even as a
personally supervised Breakstone Pro-
duction. Devarupa will be proud of us
from wherever he’s watching. And he'll
be trusting us, trusting me and trusting
you to tell the truth about his life and
bring his supernal message afresh to all
mankind as only the greatness of the
greatest art form of the centuries can
bring it !”

“Yes, sir,” said Gan Garrett. There
seemed to be little else to say.

Sacheverell Breakstone needed no
prompting. “Yes, my boy,” he went on,
"truth is what we want from you. Truth
and accuracy, but especially truth. Don’t
spend too much worry on niggling little
details. Supposing — mind you, I’m just
thinking aloud — but supposing we put a
woman in the picture. Now you and I
know that there wasn’t any woman in
Devarupa's life. That’s accuracy. But
he loved all humanity, didn’t he? And
aren’t women more than half of hu-
manity? So if we show him say loving
a woman — you understand this is just
groping with words — isn’t that truth in
the deeper sense? You understand?”

“Yes, sir. I am here to give the cachet
of academic authority to all the non-
academic changes you wish to ring on
the story of Devarupa.”

Breakstone hesitated, then burst out
into a heavy laugh, “Good man. You
do understand me. No pretense about
you. We’ll get on, we will. You can
understand the creative mind. Because
that’s what I am, mind you. All this”
— his broad gesture included every bit
of Metropolis — “is my creation. And
the creative mind creates its own truth
which is higher than facts. All my life

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

I’ve wanted to do a life of Devarupa —
with all due reverence, you understand,
but still showing that he was a real man.
A man of and for men. And I’m the
man to do it. They don’t call me the
1 .ittle Hitler of Sollywood for nothing.”

Garrett smiled to himself. No one
with any knowledge of Twentieth Cen-
tury history could well consider a “Hit-
ler” the ideal interpreter of that saint
among men, the great Devarupa. But
the evil that conquerors do may often
be interred with their hones ; he remem-
bered from literary study how Caesar
and Napoleon had become just such
metaphorical figures of power, with no
allusion to their manifold infamies.

“Well,” Breakstone announced, “it's
been wonderful having this talk with
you, Garner.”

“Garrett.”

“I said Garrett. It's been a pleasure
to hear your ideas on Devarupa, and
that's a real suggestion of yours about
the woman. You’re no hidebound aca-
demician, I can see that. Now if you’ll
take the left-hand walk for about two
hundred meters, you’ll find Uranov’s
office. He’s working on the script to-
day — his third day, in fact. He’s lasting
well. You talk it over with him. And
enjoy yourself in Sollywood.”

Garrett let the swizard jangle as he
shook hands with bis boss. Breakstone
glanced at it. “Hm-m-m. Nice tiring.
Dinosaur of some kind, eh ? Odd ma-
terial ; what’s it made of?”

“Lovestonite.”

“ Lovestonite ? Well, well. What next?
The motto of Metropolis, by the way;
remember that. What next? You un-
derstand? Always something new.
Come see me any time you're in trou-
ble. but you won’t need to. Not you.
We understand each other. Good luck.”
Even as Garrett left, the Little Hitler
of Sollywood had pulled several switches
and begun dictating a letter to the De-
partment of Allocation, giving instruc-
tions to a set designer, and receiving
from his Calcutta exhibitor.

The few people that Garrett passed on
his way down the writers’ corridor
looked fretful and hagridden — almost
like men from the Twentieth Century.
The responsibility of turning out the
major entertainment device of the world
weighed heavily upon them. For though
Breakstone's description of the “greatest
art form of the centuries” might have
been exaggerated, the solid picture was
certainly the most widespread and im-
portant. With its own powerful impact,
plus the freedom of a World State and
the world-wide spread of Basic English,
it had attained an influence that even the
old two-dimensional pictures had never
known.

Garrett heard a rich, deep voice be-
hind the door as he knocked. There was
a pause, and he held up his plaque for
scrutiny through a one-way glass. The
door dilated, and as he entered the
room’s occupant turned the switch on his
dictotyper which altered it from record-
ing to turning out a typed script.

“So!” said Hesketh Uranov. “You're
S. B.’s newest find. You’re the bright
boy that’s to ride herd on me, huh ?”

Uranov represented the new inter-
bred type that was rising to dominance
in the world. It was rare by now, of
course, to see any sample of such a pure
racial type as the sheer Irishness of the
black-haired, blue-eyed girl in the liner
— doubtless a fortuitous throwback — but
it was almost equally rare to see such a
successful fusion as Hesketh Uranov.
His skin was a golden brown, closest
perhaps to the Polynesian, but not ex-
actly that of any pure racial type. His
aquiline nose, his thick lips, his slightly
slanted eyes seemed not so much a
heterogeneous collection of racial frag-
ments as the perfectly right lineaments
of a new race.

Garrett was still trying to find the
friendly response to this unfriendly
greeting when Uranov said “You drink?
I thought not. Historian — However.”
He upended a bottle. “Stay in Solly-
wood long enough and you’ll learn worse
than this, my boy. What 're you sticking

ONE-WAY TRIP

your hand out for ? Can’t wait to get
your researcher’s fingers on my script?”

“All I want,” said Garrett patiently,
“is that bottle.” He took it.

After that swig, Uranov looked at
him with new respect. “Maybe you’re
all right. But I doubt it. S. B. sent
you.”

“Look,” said Gan Garrett. “I’ve
seen S. B. for only five minutes. I’ve
heard about you as Metropolis’ ace
writer for five years. So you have —
sixty times twenty-four times three hun-
dred and sixty-five — you have roughly
half a million times as much cause to dis-
like him as I have. But I’ll still enter
the race with you.”

“O. K.,” said Uranov. “Don’t mind
if I bark. I just don’t like anybody
much these days which is, of course, the
perfect mood in which to approach a
script on Devarupa.”

“What’re you doing to that script?”
Garrett sat down, near the bottle. “S. B.
babbled something about a woman.”

Uranov groaned. “I know. These
epics have the highest erotic value of
any form of entertainment yet created.
You probably know the old varieties of
theater. Imagine how a burlesque audi-
ence would have reacted if its queen
were ten times life size and visible in
detail from the top of the gallery. Imag-
ine how the flat film fan would have felt
if his glamour girls had had three dimen-
sions and the true color of flesh. So we
mustn’t waste these possibilities and
there’s got to be a woman. I’m trying
to tone her down ; just a loyal disciple
with a sort of hopeless spiritual love.
But S. B.’s got his eye on Astra Ardless
for it; and have you ever thought of
what it’ll be like to tone that last year’s
space-warmer down ?” He took another
drink and this time handed over the
bottle unasked.

“Garrett,” he said, "you’re not going
to believe this. But in some twisted,
crazy and very damned beautiful way
I’m proud of this assignment. Sure, I
know, I’m the guy that was going to
writer for posterity and here I am mak-

ing a fortune under a dome in Solly-
wood and drinking my liver out of ex-
istence. But some things are still im-
portant to me, and Devarupa’s one of
them. People take him for granted now.
They take for granted the whole state of
peace that he created. They’re forget-
ting that peace itself is the greatest of
all battles. What I want to do — ”

The dictotyper pinged. Uranov re-
moved the finished copy, looked at it,
and crumpled it up with a curse. Then
he smoothed it out again .and laid it on
his desk. “It might do. I can’t write
this right; but I’m going to die trying.
What I want to stress is his early years.
Even before that. I want to show the
false peaces in the War of the Twentieth
Century, the T9 to ’39 gap, for instance.
The way the smug sat back and said
‘Swell, it’s peace, now there’s nothing to
worry about.’ And you stop worrying
and you cease to belong to mankind.
Then I want to take some of Devarupa’s
own utterances — the Bombay Docu-
ment, for example — and show the real
fighting strength that’s in them. I’ve
got to make these dopes see that pacifism
isn’t passivism — while S. B.,” he added
despondently, “bewitches the whole
thing up with our darling Astra.”

Garrett drank. “I’m with you,” he
said simply.

“What I’d even like,” Uranov went
on heatedly, “is to work in a little pro-
paganda at the end on this Martian busi-
ness — show how a true living peace can
function. You know, a sort of ‘Join the
space crews and see another world’
whoozit. And, God, there is something
you can get really excited about. To
think of those — how many is it, near
thirty now? — who’ve made the landing,
accomplished man’s impossible dream,
and died there, on a bitterer one-way
trip than any criminal ever made, all
because this peaceful world — ”

He broke off as Garrett was reaching
for the bottle again. “Sorry. I talk too
much. And in another minute you’ll be
asking me why I don’t sign up myself if
I feel so strongly. For the matter of

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

that, why don’t I? Nice swizard you’re
wearing there.”

“Very. It’s a Kubi — Hey! Did
you say swizard? Then you know her?”

“Know who?”

“The girl who used to call them swiz-
ards when she was little. Black hair.
Blue eyes. Funny little nose that tilts
up. You know her?”

Uranov frowned. “I know her,” he
said abstractedly, “Works here in pub-
lic relations. Fix you up any time,
though how you — But what’s your
swizard made of? Lovestonite ?”

“Yes.”

“Funny use for it. Why, you don’t
maybe — ” He killed the bottle. “If
we’re going to get together on this, com-
rade, you know what we need? A
drink. Come on. We’re going to paint
Sollywood a bright magenta and end up
seeing pink swizards. And maybe be-
fore the evening’s over, we’ll even have
a talk about lovestonite.”

“I should just warn you,” said Gan
Garrett. “Don’t mind if a dagger hits
you. It’ll be meant for me.”

But the next attack was not made
with a dagger. It took place hours later
when they were leaving the Selene, that
resplendent night spot with its exact
replica of its famous namesake in Luna
City, even down to the longest bar in
the universe — a safe enough statement
so long as no spaceship had yet man-
aged to return from another planet.

“In a way, you can’t blame S. B.,”
Uranov was saying. This surprising
tolerance was the only noticeable effect
on him of the evening's liquor. “He’s a
frustrated creator?' He’d flopped as a
writer and as a musician before he dis-
covered his executive talents. He hasn’t
a spark of the creative ability that I used
to have or that a man like Mig Valen-
tinez has ; but he’s got all the urge. And
he takes it out in shoving around the
ones who can create and then crying,
‘Behold my creation!’ In a way, it’s
sad rather than — ”

The man appeared out of nowhere.

He wore a heavy cloak and was only a
black blob in the bright night. The flash
came from the core of the blackness of
his cloak, and there was no noise with it.

Gan Garrett’s eyes blinked as he
jumped, his popgun appearing auto-
matically in his hand, and when they
opened, the man was gone. Ten min-
utes of joint search failed to disclose
him, though his cloak lay' abandoned
around the next corner.

“Did you see what he had in his
hand ?” Uranov asked. “It looked like
a prop pistol from an historical picture.
But it didn't — ” He stopped by the wall
where the attack had happened, stared,
and whistled.

Garrett looked at the charred xyloid.

“Could it — ” Uranov groped. “It
can’t be that . . . that somebody has
really found the power of disintegrator
guns, like in that world-of-the-future
epic I turned out last year?”

Garrett rubbed his cheek. “I felt
something. I didn’t dodge quite enough
to—”

“Look, my boy.” Uranov was seri-
ous. “I thought it was a gag when you
babbled about daggers. I don’t know
what this lad was playing, but it wasn’t
nice games. You’re the best drinking
companion I’ve found since Schwan-
berg quit epics to make a hopeless try
for Mars; but if I’m to see much more
of you, I want to know who’s trying to
kill you and why.”

“So do I,” Garrett grunted. “But
first” — he played with the swizard —
“what do you know about lovestonite?”

“Just enough to worry a little. I
know that there’s an irrational amount
of lovestonite processing going on, and
I know Stag Hartle’s mixed up in it,
which means no good. And I know' that
the . . . that some people I know are
concerned about it.”

“Can you tell me any more? . Or can
you put me in touch with anyone who
can ?”

“A, no. B, yes. This is, of course,
all part of your technical-historical re-
search ?”

ONE-WAY TRIP

Garrett grinned. "I guess research
workers don’t go armed, do they? Nor
have new lethal weapons tried out on
them. Hardly much use to keep up the
masquerade for you.”

“W. B. I.?”

“Check.”

"Come on home with me,” Uranov
decided suddenly. “God knows what
kind of booby trap they may have rigged
up where you’re staying. You can ex-
plain it all right at the studio — we
wanted to live together for closer col-
laboration on the epic. And tomorrow
we'll see what we can do about more
information. You know Mig Valenti-
nez ?”

“I know his work.” Garrett sounded
a little awed. “He’s marvelous.”

“I haven’t seen him for a couple of
months, but I know he was playing
around with lovestonite. We ean run
down there and — But first, comrade,
how about a nightcap?”

Garrett woke from a confused dream
of a naked Irish girl who was riding
tandem on a swizard with a man with
a melancholy and wistful smile. The
swizard was of the fire-breathing variety,
and its breath was searing hot on Gar-
rett’s cheek. The cheek still . burned
when he was wideawake and looking
up at the multiracial face of Hesketh v
Uranov.

“Sleep all right? No hangover?”
“None. But I’ve got the damnedest
sensation here in my cheek — right where
whatever it was missed me. Do you
suppose it was an atomic weapon, and
this is like a radium burn?”

Uranov bent over and stared at the
cheek. When he rose he was half-
laughing, half-worried. “I don't know
what we’re getting into,” he said. “I
should stick to my dictotyper and leave
melodrama and lovestonite to the
W. B. I., or to the . . . those friends I
mentioned. Because this is nuts. Purely
nuts.”

“Yes? What goes?”

“What you received from the new

lethal weapon, comrade, is nothing more
nor less than a very nasty patch of sun-
burn.”

II.

Uranov paused on their way to the
research lab. “Want to watch ’em shoot-
ing? That’s usually a thrill to the new
visitor.”

Garrett rubbed his salved but still
burning cheek. “I’ve got thrills
enough.”

“Just for a minute. Then you can
talk more plausibly when I tell S. B.
I’ve just been showing you around.”

A red light glowed in front of one of
the studios. Their plaques admitted
them to the soundproof observers’ gal-
lery. “This is an interior, of course,”
Uranov explained. “Exteriors are all
shot outside under dome, some of them
here at the main plant, most of them on
the various locations. You probably saw
them from the ship?”

Garrett nodded.

“California’s amazing enough natu-
rally, and after our landscaper’s went to
work — It’s really extraordinary. We
can shoot any possible aspect of the
world’s surface, and we have a con-
densed replica of every city of any im-
portance, from Novosibirsk to Luna
City. Southern California is the world
in miniature ; destroy the rest of civiliza-
tion, and an archaeologist could re-create
it all from our locations.” There was a
certain possessive pride in his voice,
despite his avowed contempt for Solly-
wood.

“All the shooting is under dome?”

Uranov nodded. “The cameramen
say sunlight through dome is better than
direct, and there are never any delays
because of weather. The sky clouds
over, and your artificial light comes on
automatically at exactly the right
strength.”

Garrett looked down at the shooting
interior. To judge from sets and cos-
tumes, it was a scene from a glamorous
drawing-room comedy — probably the
standard plot about the beautiful hostess

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

on the lunar rocket who marries the son
of the owner and longs fretfully for her
exciting old life until she finds her true
self in domesticity. There were only
two actors in the scene. The man he
recognized as that charmingly suave
Eurasian Hartley Liu. but the woman —
He glanced at Uranov questioning]}'.

“Astra Ardless,” said Uranov.
“Looks older, doesn’t she? But wait till
you see what those cameras make of
her.’’

She did look older than Garrett had
ever seen her on the beam. But that
was not too surprising ; he had fallen
adolescently in love with her when she
first became famous, and that was almost
fifteen years ago. She looked older and
not nearly so glamorous, and yet in a
strange way more beautiful. There was
a quality of resigned sadness about her.

To fans all over the globe, only actors
mattered. The heart that pounded at
the thought of Astra Ardless or Hartley
Liu. would never have heard of a writer
such as Uranov or even a producer-
director such as S. B. And even Gar-
rett, more intelligently perceptive than
the average fan, had never realized how
outnumbered the actors were on the set.

Two of them, and sixteen cameramen,
to say nothing of the assistant techni-
cians and prop men and the sound en-
gineers dimly glimpsed in their niches
in the opposite wall. The synchronized
cameras all shot the scene at once from
their sixteen different: angles. Later
those sixteen beams would be cast from
sixteen similarly placed projectors onto
a curtain of Cassellite, that strange,
translucent, solid-seeming gas which had
made the epics possible.

A slightly false inflection on the part
of Astra Ardless’ • speaking voice, and
perhaps one critic in Kamchatka or
Keokuk might notice it and observe that
Miss Ardless was slipping. One slightly
false adjustment on the part of a single
technician, and the entire scene would
be so much junk.

“Actors don't really count for much,
do they?”

“I don’t know,” said Uranov slowly.
“Sometimes I think they’re a bunch ot
built-up parasites, and yet — It’s like
wondering if the individual counts for
much when the world state is so perfect.
You get into trouble — But come on.
You’ve seen enough to make talk with
S. B. Now let’s call on Doc Wojcek."

They had apparently interrupted a
scene when they entered the laboratory.
There was dead silence. The bald hut
sturdy-looking scientist fiddled uncom-
fortably with the articles on his desk,
and seemed loath to raise his eves to the
newcomers. At last the sharp-faced
man with the brilliant ascot — unusually
brilliant even for Sollvwood — said : “Hi,
Hesky.”

“Hi, Stag.” There was no friendli-
ness in L T ranov’s voice.

“S. B. wants to see you.”

“I know. Be there in a minute. Just
showing Garrett here around the
works.”

The sharp-faced man rose. His hand
rested for a moment palm up on the
table. “Well, doc? All clear?"

“All clear," said Dr. Wojcek hesi-
tantly.

“Then I’ll be going. See you around.
Hesky.”

Something stayed in the room after
his departure, an almost physical aura
of oppression. “Who was that?” Gar-
rett asked.

“Stag Hartle,” Uranov explained.
“One of our choicer jackals. Got his
name because he started out in Solly-
wood bootlegging stag epics — you can
see the possibilities in them ? One of his
actresses died of what he put her
through — ”

“And he never made a one-way trip?"

“Something happened. Strings—
Nothing ever proved. Stag knows how
to make himself useful. But he’s theo-
retically leading a reformed life now.”

Garrett could still see that hand palm
up in the bright light of the laboratory.
To the trained eye, the traces of para-
derm on the fingers were clearly visible.

ONE-WAY TRIP

Those who lead reformed lives do not
usually need to conceal their finger-
prints.

“I wonder—” said Dr. Wojcek.

"Sorry. I got sidetracked. Dr. Woj-
cek, this is Gan Garrett. New technical
adviser on history. I’m showing him
around the plant — thought he’d like to
see your set-up.”

Wojcek nodded. He shrugged his
shoulders as though to cast off the bur-
den of Atlas. “Of course,” he began,
“we don’t do any interesting theoretical
work here — all purely practical study of
needed technical developments. But
still we have some odd angles. For in-
stance — ” As he spoke, his depression
lifted. His absorption in his work out-
weighed his cares, and he was a bril-
liant and charming guide through the
wonders of the laboratory.

At last, “Do you do much work with
lovestonite?” Garrett asked casually.

“Not to speak of,” said Dr. Wojcek.

Uranov made a curious gesture with
two fingers.

Dr. Wojcek lifted one sparse eyebrow.
“But a little,” he added. “In fact, I’ve
been carrying on some rather interesting
experiments lately. Do you know much
about the properties of lovestonite ?”

“Very little. I’d gathered that it had
practically none worth speaking about.”

“From a commercial point of view,
young man, that’s true enough. But it
does have one interesting characteristic.”
He led them over to a corner of the
laboratory where a dark sheet of vitre-
ous plastic, like the material of the swi®-
ard, stood in a frame. Wojcek stationed
himself beside it like a lecturer in a class.
“Now' what, gentlemen, is the speed of
light?”

“Three hundred thousand kilometers
per second,” Garrett answered auto-
matically.

“True, but not wholly true. Three
hundred thousand kilometers per sec-
ond — in what ?”

“In what? Why, in air, I suppose.”

“To be precise, in a vacuum. For
practical purposes, it is the same in the

ordinary atmosphere. And the speed of
light is such a convenient constant in
theory that we tend to think of it as a
constant in fact. But in water, for in-
stance, the speed of light is only two-
hundred thousand k. p. s., and in car-
bon disulphide, a mere hundred and
twenty thousand.”

“And in lovestonite?” Garrett asked.

"In lovestonite, normal untampered-
with lovestonite, the speed of light is
only seventy-five thousand kilometers
per second. Now the differences in
these speeds are not noticeable to the
naked eye.” He passed his arm behind
the sheet of lovestonite. The plastic was
dark but transparent, like smoked glass.
"You perceive, of course, no difference
between the parts of my arm behind and
outside of this sheet, though actually
you see one about one one-billionth of a
second later than the other. The differ-
ence is large in theory, but negligible in
fact.

“However, we have discovered one
practical use for this difference. A lens
made partly of normal glass and partly
of lovestonite produces a very curious
photographic effect. The result does
not seem out of focus, but somehow just
the least but — how shall I put it — per-
turbing, wrong. We spent months on
the exact structure of such a lens, and I
think the results have been most satis-
factory. You recall the supernatural
scenes in ’The Thing from the Past’?
Well, their incomparable eeriness which
the critics praised so, was due to the use
of part-lovestonite lenses.” He paused.

“And that’s all you know about love-
stonite ?”

Dr. Wojcek hesitated, and again
Uranov gestured. “Well, I ... I did
make an interesting discovery quite by
accident. My assistant was carrying on
some other work near the lovestonite
while I was engaged in some measure-
ments, and we found that an electro-
magnetic field exerts a startling effect.
It varies, of course, with the density of
the field and the direction of the lines of
force, and we have by no means ex-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

hausted our experiments as yet — ” He
stopped, with a sudden shock of realiza-
tion.

“Go on.”

“Yes — Yes — We have been able
to increase the speed of light through
lovestonite almost to the normal three
hundred thousand, and to reduce it to
as low as five thousand. The possibili-
ties are — ” He broke off again.

Garrett put his reaction together with
the scene they had interrupted. “So
Stag Hartle has given you orders to lay
■ off the lovestonite experiments?”

Dr. Wojcek did not reply with a direct
yes or no. “What can I do?” he asked,
expecting no answer. “Hartle has in-
fluence. My business here is to do what
I am told, not to pursue promising lines
of experimental theory.”

Garrett frowned, thinking over this
newest fact on lovestonite, and toyed
with his swizard. “It still doesn’t help,”
he thought aloud. “Not obviously.
What do you think about these love-
stonite mirrors?”

“I’ve heard they're being manufac-
tured. I can’t imagine why; the idea’s
ridiculous.”

“Thanks,” said Garrett. “Thanks a
lot. This has been a most interesting —
well, we’ll say visitor’s tour.”

“And now,” said Uranov, “we’ll pay
our respects to S. B., or he’ll be wanting
to know how we think we’re earning our
credits.”

“Ah, boys,” Sacheverell Breakstone
greeted them. “Glad to see you. Get-
ting acquainted with the place, Garrett?
Coming to understand how we do things
here? Fine,” he went on before Garrett
could answer. “Glad to hear it. And
now to business. You may have heard
I’m going away for a while next week.
We’re shooting the big scenes in ‘Lura-
zar’ on location on the Moon. I think
they need my personal supervision.
Astra finishes her current epic today,
and as soon as we can get under way —
But what I wanted to say: I expect to
see a shooting script when I get back.

Stick dose to him, Garrett. Don’t let
him idle. And I don’t want either of
you to be leaving Metropolis until then.
You, Uranov, pay special attention to
that suggestion of Garrett’s about work-
ing in a woman — rather Astra’s type as
he described her. Maybe she could
motivate him. Supposing — I’m just

groping with words, you understand —
she might be a Siberian general who — ”

Hesketh Uranov listened patiently
while S. B. twisted some of the most
stirring events in history into a vehicle
for Astra Ardless. Garrett frowned to
himself. If his orders were to confine
himself to the Metropolis lot, and he was
bound to subordinate his real job to his
apparent one, though he hardly needed
to avoid suspicion any longer when knife
throwers and practitioners with secret
weapons —

“That’ll be all,” S. B. concluded. “I
always find these conferences stimulat-
ing. You understand? Free inter-
change of minds. And I'll want that
script when Astra and I get back from
the Moon. Meanwhile, you stick here.
Both of you.”

“Mr. Breakstone,” Garrett asked with
academic diffidence, “who is designing
the sets for the Devarupa epic?”

“Tentatively Benson.” S. B. did' not
sound contented.

“If I may offer technical advice, it
seems to me that Emigdio Valentinez’s
knowledge of the period and great artis-
tic ability — ”

“I know. I know. I’d mortgage half
the studio to get Valentinez for the job.
But he’s gone hermit on us. He won’t
listen to — ”

“He might listen to me,” Garrett lied
quietly. “We’re old friends. Don’t you
think it might be worth our while for me
to run down to his place? Uranov can
drive me, and we can work on the way ?”

Breakstone grunted. “Fine. Fine.
But remember the deadline on that
script.”

Uranov’s two-seater copter was laden
with swank gadgetry, most of which

served to indicate his position in Solly-
wood rather than any practical need. It
rode well, however, and made the trip to
Valentinez’s beach retreat in about ten
minutes.

“I hate to drop in on Mig unan-
nounced,” said Uranov, "but he hasn’t
a televisor or even a blind phone and
he won’t open mail. He said he was
coming out here to solve a problem —
artistic, I think, rather than personal —
and the hell with all the complications of
progress. That was a month or two ago

and nobody’s heard a word from him
since. Neat trick of yours, by the way,
to get S. B. to turn us loose.”

“We might bring it up at that,” said
Garrett. “Valentinez would be idea! to
design that epic.”

“Bring up your lovestonite problem
first. If you mention S. B., he’s apt to
walk out on you flat. Temperamental, I
suppose, but still a nice guy. I think
Astra’s still carrying a torch for him.”
“So? That’s a bit of Solly wood gos-
sip that never got on the telecasts.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“Which reminds me : I haven't for-
gotten about your swizard girl. We’re
having dinner with her tonight, if we
get through here in time.”

“I wish you hadn't told me. I’ll be
thinking about that dinner instead of
lovcstonite. But what do you think
Yalentinez can tell us?”

“I don’t know. I only know that it
seemed to tie in somehow with this prob-
lem of his. And any lead that you can
get—”

The copter dropped straight down
onto the rolling dunes. It might have
been a time machine that had carried
them out of the reach of all signs of
progress. Nothing but the ramshackle
studio indicated the presence of man.
and even that might have come bodily
out of some far earlier century.

“Mig!” Uranov shouted. “Hi. Mig!
Get out the glasses ! Company !”

No answer came from the wind-worn
wooden studio. Garrett and Uranov
plowed up the hillock to the door and
paused to empty sand from their shoes.
Uranov beat a rhythmic tattoo on the
weather-beaten door. There was still
-no answer.

Garrett pushed at the door, an old-
fashioned hinged affair. It swung open.
The only trace of progress inside the
studio was the hundreds of microbooks
and their projector. There were shelves
upon shelves of the older paper books,
too, and canvases and an easel and
brushes and paint pots and rags and
everything but Emigdio Yalentinez.

He heard Uranov’s puzzled voice
from behind his shoulder. “We’d have
heard about it if he’d come back to town.
The man’s news.”

“He’s probably out painting some-
place. You’re the one that knows him;
you go scout around. I’ll wait here in
case you miss him and he comes back.”
Uranov nodded. “I’ll be glad to. I
can see how Mig feels about this stretch
of coast. You see nothing but sand
and ocean and your soul begins to come
back inside you. Maybe with a shack
dike this I could write the — ” He shook

himself and said, “See you later.”

Garrett was glad to be rid of a witness.
Even the cynical Uranov might not ap-
preciate the ethics of W. B. I. work. To
find what has to be found, that is the
important thing. The moral problem in-
volved in a guest’s right to search his
host’s belongings is secondary. Suppos-
ing Valentinez, when he did appear, de-
clined to talk of lovestonite? Best to
forestall that by learning what one could
to start with.

It was a distracting search. Valenti-
nez’s library was a great temptation, and
his own canvases were an absolute bar-
rier to serious detective work. In no
gallery had Garrett ever seen a Yalen-
tinez exhibit like this, and everything
from the hastiest sketches to a magnifi-
cent and carefully finished sandscape
bore the complete authority of the
master.

Two things especially Garrett could
gladly have spent long hours contem-
plating. One was a very rough crayon
sketcli for a self-portrait; there was no
mistaking the gentle melancholy of that
smiling face. The other was a half-
finished. composition of sun and sea and
rock and algae, which even in its im-
perfect state seemed to sum up all the
beauty of a world without man’s refine-
ments — and yet a beauty that existed
only because a great man could under-
stand and perfect it.

But Garrett resolutely tore his eyes
from these two fragmentary master-
pieces and went on with his search. He
had covered the whole studio when he
realized what was wrong — terribly
wrong. There was not the slightest hint
of anything concerned with lovestonite.

His own swizard was the only bit of
lovestonite in the room. The random
notes and scribbled jottings filed hap-
hazardly among canvases and furniture
dealt with formulas for paint, possible
new developments in epic sets, an essay
on the problems of peace, the possibili-
ties of revival of old-style cookery, the
latest discoveries in radioactivity, re-
visions in the orbit calculations of the

ONE-WAY TRIP

doomed Martian spaceships — every-
thing under and around the sun — for
IValentinez had the da Vinci type of
creative mind — save lovestonite. Even
the all-embracing library seemed to con-
tain no books on the newer plastics, the
clays of Australia, or the varying trans-
mission speeds of light.

Yet Valentinez was said to have been
working on lovestonite. And working
where? There were no laboratory fa-
cilities here.

Then Garrett looked out of the rear
window and noticed the blackening of
the sand there. It had all been carefully
raked over, but some large structure had
been burned to the ground. A labora-
tory? A laboratory where Etnigdio
yalentinez had discovered — what?

His mind whirling with a half-resolved
hypothesis, Garrett returned to contem-
plation of his two favorites among the
pictures. That self-portrait was extraor-
dinary. Partly in that it did not portray
the artist as artist, no brush and pal-
ette to label it, partly in that it seemed
so much freer, more unconstrained than
a self-portrait generally managed to be.

He picked it up. On the reverse
was marked in red crayon capitals
LVSTITE.

Garrett clicked his tongue against his
teeth. He went over to a pile of other
sketches and found what he thought he’d
remembered seeing — another self-por-
trait. Good — could a Valentinez help
being good? — but far inferior — conven-
tional in pose and somewhat stilted in
treatment. He turned it over. In its
reverse was crayoned MIRROR.

He sat down. With one flash, the
whole business clicked into place.
Everything fitted — for a start at least.
Valentinez had come here to work on a
problem and had thought to solve it with
lovestonite. The speed of light in love-
stonite is variable; Dr. Wojcek hoped
eventually to reduce it almost to zero at
will.

Suppose the problem was that of self-
portraiture. Artists have previously

worked with mirror arrangements. That
has disadvantages. One, you have to
paint yourself working; you model and
paint the model at once. Two, either
you see a mirror-image of yourself,
which is not as others see you ; or you
use a complex arrangement of mirrors
which gives you a direct as-seen-by-
others image, but confuses your move-
ments terribly. When you move your
right hand, say, and your mirror image
moves, not its left, but its own right,
you grow so confused that it affects your
muscular co-ordination.

But suppose you can at will vary the
speed of light through lovestonite. You
reduce that speed almost to zero. You
stand in front of the lovestonite. Your
image enters it, but is not visible yet on
the other side ; will not be visible for
some indefinite length of time. Then
reverse the slab of lovestonite. Control
it with an electromagnet. Let that light
which is your image, come through to
you under your control —

A brilliant solution of a technical
problem of painting. Fully worthy of
the great Valentinez. But it did not ex-
plain the sudden increase in lovestonite
manufacture. It did not explain why
Valentinez’s laboratory had been burned
down and all trace of his researches de-
stroyed. It did not explain why some
one wished to wipe out Gan Garrett, nor
why Uranov was so long finding the
painter. Garrett began to feel a terrible
conviction that no one would ever find
Emigdio Valentinez alive. Fie began to
fear the report that Uranov would bring
back.

The door creaked open on its metal
hinges. Garrett looked up reluctantly.
“You didn’t find him,” he started to say,
but the words stopped short. For the
man in the doorway was not Uranov,
but that notable jackal Stag Hartle.

A faint rising hum told of the depar-
ture of Uranov’s copter.

“Nice of you to bring yourself down
here,” said Stag Hartle. In his hand
was what looked like a prop pistol. “It's

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

been kind of difficult getting at you in
Sollywood. It’s quiet and uninterrupted
here since your friend cleared out.”
“Friend,” Garrett repeated bitterly.
It hurt. In the past twenty-four hours
he had come to like the multiracial epic
writer.

“He has good sense,” said Hartle. “I
gave him a hint of what we’d planned for
you and wondered did he want to be
included in. 'He was a bright boy; he
decided no.”

Garrett let his hand rest in his pocket.
The popgun which the girl had so de-
rided, was reassuringly capable of put-
ting this jackal instantly out of action.
But there were things to find out first.
“So you’re going to kill me, just as you
killed Emigdio Valentinez?”

“Not just the same. No. We’ve got
our own plans for you.”

“Then you admit killing the greatest
painter of our day?”

“Why not?” Hartle asked casually.
“You’re not telling anybody.” Then he
added more loudly, “Come on in, boys.”
Garrett's cheek smarted ; the effect of
the ointment was wearing off. As his
night-acquired sunburn tingled, he
glanced at Hartle’s prop pistol. More of
the picture began to shape up as clearly
as though beams were focusing on a Cas-
sellite screen in front of him. “Valen-
tinez had perfected the control of love-
stonite,” he said slowly. “He was fool
enough to show his device to you.”

A half dozen men filed into the room.
They were a crummy lot — the scrapings
of the dives in Luna City, or those out-
casts that gravitate to extra work in
Sollywood as they used to drift into the
Foreign Legion. They all held pistols.

Garrett lounged back, both hands
comfortably in his pockets. His left
encountered the knife which had missed
him on his entrance to Metropolis Pic-
tures. Yes, there was even that left if
everything else failed him, though if lie
could bring himself to use it — “Valen-
tinez thought,” he went on calmly, “that
he had simply invented a device for self-
portraiture. You realized that what he

had actually created was a gadget for
storing sunlight and releasing it at will
in any desired strength. You — or some-
one behind you — began the processing
of vast amounts of lovestonite. Metal
and explosives are unobtainable for
weapons ; but the mirrors that you have
manufactured, when the right electro-
magnetic hookup is attached to them,
will arm a host that can set a city ablaze
and blind its every defender. There are
tiny lovestonite ‘mirrors’ in those pistols.
They’ve been exposed to sunlight; the
trigger releases that stored energy.”

“Smart, ain’t he, boys?” Stag Hartle
demanded. “Figured that out all by
himself, too.”

Garrett’s hand was firm on his pop-
gun. Uranov’s copter was gone, but
there must be another outside that had
brought this crew. If he could keep
talking, build to a moment of distrac-
tion — “But why?” he wondered aloud.
“You've found a new weapon that can
be manufactured without overt viola-
tion of the law. But why ? The quanti-
ties you’ve been turning out — what mob
are you arming, and for what purpose ?”

“For a purpose that good little boys
from the W. B. I. shouldn’t ought to
understand. Because you’re the back-
bone of this cockeyed peace that's sap-
ping the guts of the world. Hell, there
ain’t no fun in life now. But there will
be, brother. Christmas on wheels, but
there will be!”

A luxurious gloat spread over Har-
tle’s narrow face. His self-satisfaction
provided the one necessary instant of
diversion. For the first time, his love-
stonite pistol was not pointed in Gar-
rett’s face.

No frontiersman in an historical epic
of the Old West was quicker on the
draw than a good W. B. I. man. The
anaesthetic gun was in Gan Garrett’s
hand now, and trained neatly on Hartle.
“You realize,” said Garrett with dry
factuality, “that the. comatin crystals
would penetrate before you could raise
your weapon. I’ve learned as much as
I need at the moment, and thank you.

ONE-WAY TRIP

Hurtle. Now I’m leaving — and I
wouldn't try to stop me.”

His mind was clear and cool. He
could even reflect that that last sentence
of his was itself something of an Irish
bull. He deliberately turned his back
on Hartle ; he was reasonably sure that
a lovestonite blast would have little ef-
fect through thicknesses of clothing, and
lie felt that Hartle’s mysterious “plans”
for him did not include anything so di-
rect as another dagger,

His trained muscles carried him with
rapid deftness. He was past the crew
while they still goggled at their leader's
discomfiture. One remained. In the
doorway stood a huge bulk of man with
a flowing blond beard. Gan Garrett
squeezed his trigger. The pellet made a
little plop as it penetrated clothing and
skin. Blond Beard opened his mouth,
half moved his own pistol hand, and then
crumpled.

Seconds made the difference here, and
the huge bulk of Blond Beard caused the
seconds’ delay. His body, even uncon-
scious, still blocked the doorway, and
Garrett had to pause, to gather himself
for a leap. In that momentary pause,
he felt a sharp burning pang in his right
hand. He did not quite drop his pop-
gun, but his hand sank. Wiry fingers
clutched his wrist and forced it down
still farther.

He twisted to glimpse his antagonist.
It was a squat and extremely hairy
oriental — probably an Ainu — whose

sinewy arms were devoting their utmost
effort to turning him to face Hartle.

Garrett's uninjured left hand drew
out the knife. He still did not know
within himself whether he could use it.
But to free himself now, when so much,
the very structure of the peace itself
might depend on his use of what he had
learned here —

He heard Hartle’s sardonic laugh.
“So the W. B. I. boys don’t mind a little
killing so long as they’re the guys that
do it. Garrett, you don’t know how
much easier you’re making our job.”

Garrett’s body twisted with the Ainu’s

like one sculptural mass. The muscles
of his left arm tightened. Then a sud-
den jerk brought him face to face with
Hartle. He saw the flicker of pleasure
on the man’s face and the slight move-
ment of lu's pistol hand.

The world exploded around him. The
sight of his eyes flared up to searing in-
candescence and then went out. He was
in blackness filled with red and green
glints of chaotic vividness. The skin of
his face ached with burning pain. His
mind whirled, and he felt himself spin-
ning into limitless space.

He could see again when he regained
consciousness. It must have been a con-
servative release of sunpower; a love-
stonite pistol could, he was sure, induce
permanent blindness, and possibly much
more. He was surprised that Stag Har-
tle had showed him such mercy. He
was, in fact, surprised to find himself
alive at all. But he was most surprised
to find himself where he was.

He had seen these clean, sunny, and
terrible empty white cells often enough
before. A W. B. I. man makes arrests
and often finds it necessary later to visit
his prisoners. But he does not expect
to find himself in prison.

■ The doctor said, “Conscious now?
Good. Feeling better ? No, don’t touch
your face. That’s a nasty burn, but it’ll
heal up. In time for your one-way trip.”

Gan Garrett gasped. For a minute
he thought the red-and-green-speckled
blackness was coming back. "One-way
trip — ” he fumbled out. “What — ”

But the doctor had already left.

Garrett knew r the layout of these cells.
He found his way to the tablet dispenser
and swallowed a mouthful of condensed
food. Damn these dispensers ! No need
now for a guard to bring meals. A
guard could be questioned. But instead
he must sit here wondering —

Had he indeed stabbed that Ainu ? In
some sort of muscular spasm after un-
consciousness? If so — He straight-
ened his shoulders and took a deep
breath. The laws were good. Man must

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

not kill man. If he had done so, no
matter under what circumstances, then a
one-way trip was his only possible re-
ward. But if he had been somehow
framed by Stag Hartle — Could that
have been what the jackal had meant by
“what we’d planned for you’’ —

There was the buzz which meant that
the cell door was being dilated for an
official visitor. The man who came in
was very young, very alert, and very
precise. He said, “Garrett?”

“I guess so. I’m not too sure of any-
thing.”

“Breckenridge. I’ve been appointed
to defend you before the judicial council.
I might as well warn you to start with
that I have no hope whatsoever.” He
made the statement with efficient impar-
tiality.

“That’s cheery. But first of all —
what are you defending me for?”

“Killing. It’s a one-way trip for sure.
But if you’ll tell me your story — ”

“First tell me the prosecution.”

“Very simple. And I may add, con-
vincing. One Stag Hartle — not too good
a witness, I know, but plentifully corro-
borated — was worried about the con-
tinued silence of the painter Emigdio
Valentines and took a searching party
down to his beach studio. They did not
find Valentines, but they did find an
unidentified Ainu lying dead on the
sand, stabbed through the back. You
lay beside him ; apparently you had
fainted from the shock of killing and lain
on the beach long enough to acquire a
startlingly severe sunburn. The prose-
cution’s theory is that you disposed of
Valentine/., perhaps into the ocean, and
that this unknown was his bodyguard,
or perhaps a mere tramp who saw you
and so had to be finished off.”

“Nuts,” said Gan Garrett. “If that’s
all they've got — ”

“The Ainu’s blood was all over you —
spurted out of his back when he was
stabbed. Position of stains indicate your
left arm did the stabbing. Besides, there
are vour prints all over the knife handle.
Why on earth couldn’t you have had the

sense to use paraderm?” the defense
lawyer moaned sadly.

The trial took fifteen minutes. In the
two days before it, Gan Garrett had
worked harder than ever before in his
life. He had managed to get an inter-
view with the police chief himself, and
spent an hour trying desperately to poke ,
holes in the prosecution’s case, with no
success whatsoever. In all his career,
the chief had never had a murderer be-
fore ; he was loath to relinquish this one.
And if a man can’t convince his own
attorney of his innocence —

Through his lawyer he sent desperate
but restrained appeals to Hesketh
Uranov and to Sacheverell Breakstone.
He had no answer at all from the writer,
which confirmed him in his growing be-
lief that Uranov was a traitor rather,
than a weakling and had deliberately
lured him down to the lonely beach
studio. S. B. spent a half-hour with
him, told him three new fictional sub-
plots to the Devarupa epic — just grop-
ing with words, you understand — won-
dered if he could recommend another
historical technician, regretted that he
himself couldn’t attend the trial because
he’d be on the moon by then, and heard
not a word of Garrett's defense or his
accusations against Hartle.

Garrett knew that there was no hope
in appealing to the secretary who had
sent him on this job or to the W. B. I.
itself. The standing rule was “Get your-
self out.” At last a sort of stoic resign-
ment settled on him. He spent the last
twelve hours before the trial preparing
a minute precis of everything he had
learned about lovestonite, Valentine?.,
and Stag Hartle. His lawyer promised
to see that it was forwarded to the Secre-
tary of Allocation.

His trial began at 14:13, on a fine
sunny California afternoon. At 14:30
it was over. At 15:45 he was looking
at the one-man rocket through a hazy
mist of the beginning effects of dormi-
tol. By 16:00 the lid was down, the
pressure screws turned, and Gan Gar-

ONE-WAY TRIP

rett was ready to set out on the one-way
trip.

Somewhere in Hollywood Stag Hartle
was probably celebrating.

III.

The one-way trip is a form of punish-
ment — or penalty is perhaps the better
word — unique in the world’s history.
But it evolved logically and inevitably
from the fact of a world at peace, even
as that world itself had paradoxically
evolved as a direct consequence of the
War of the Twentieth Century.

At any time in the world’s history be-
fore the year 2000, the voice of Devarupa
would have gone unheard — unheard,
that is, even as the voice of Christ went
unheard by a nominally Christian world
devoted to greed and murder. Only
after the total destruction wrought by
that world-wide and century-long war
could man have listened seriously to the
true message of peace.

The world had first heard of Deva-
rupa when India was being overrun
from both sides during the last vicious
years of the German-Japanese War.
The official Domei and DNB dispatches
.slurred over or perverted his acts ; but
the legend seeped through somehow and
spread over the world, the legend of
that one province which had finally suc-
ceeded in practicing in its perfection the
traditional doctrine of nonresistance, so
successfully that each horde of invaders

in turn at last drew hack with almost
supernatural awe.

But that was a minute island of suc-
cess. Not until after the Revolt of the
Americas, when a united North and
South America arose in glorious daring
to cast off and destroy their masters —
already weakened by their own Kil-
kenny -cat t e ry ? — did the teachings of
Devarupa begin to spread.

Who or what he was, it is impossible
now to say. He was the second coming
of Christ ; he was a latter-day John the
Baptist ; he was a prophet of Allah ; he
was the Messiah ; he was an avatar of
Vishnu ; he was an old god returned ;
he was a new god born ; he was all the
gods ; he was no god.

All these things have been said, and
all are still believed. For every religion
accepted Devarupa, us god or as
prophet ; and Devarupa rejected none of
them. To many of the irreligious he
became a new religion : to others he
represented only the deepest greatness
of mankind, and as such was even more
holy.

What religion he himself professed
cannot now be historically determined ;
each church has certain proof that he
belonged to it. But all churches, and all
those without the churches, agree on the
doctrines that he taught.

There was nothing novel about these.
Christ or Buddha or Kung-fu-tse had
said them all. But Devarupa was aided
by the time in which he’ spoke; and by

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NEW SCIENTIFIC 2-WAY TREATMENT WITH QUINSANA POWDER
-ON FEET AND IN SHOES - IS PRODUCING AMAZING RE-
SULTS, IN TESTS ON THOUSANDS OF PERSONS, PRACTICALLY
ALL CASES OF ATHLETES FOOT CLEARED UP IN A SHORT TIME.
AST— 7X

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QUlNStffl

“50b

100

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

the fact that his own mixed heritage
enabled him to fuse, as none other had
ever done, the practical vigor and sol-
emnity of western religion with the
sublime mysticism of the orient.

The weary world at last truly and
sincerely wanted peace. The teachings
of Devarupa showed it the way. And
from this fortunate meeting of the time
and the man came the world state, the
world peace, and, inevitably, the one-
way trip.

For if man may not kill man — and no
Devarupian teaching is more basic than
this — surely tile State may not do so.
And yet man is but slowly perfectable ;
even a weary and repentant world con-
tains its individual fiends. There must
be some extreme penalty for the most
extreme offenses.

Life imprisonment, even when it came
to be enforced literally, proved unavail-
ing. The prisoner’s mind inevitably
grows to the shape of one purpose : to
destroy his bars. Segregation, in some-
thing like a humane and idealized ver-
sion of the old system of penal colonies
without their imperialist element, seemed
promising for a while. The independent
state of segregates on Madagascar was
apparently a complete success until that
black year of 73 and the invasion of the
African mainland.

Again the coincidence of time was for-
tunate. for the first rocket reached the
Moon in 74, and in 75 Bright- Varney
conceived the one-way trip.

The State may not kill, but it must
dispose of certain individuals. Then
ship them off into space. Put them in
one-man nondirigible rockets, with a
supply of condensed food and oxygen
corresponding to their calculated normal
life span, and send them forth on in-
determinate journeys.

Most of these rockets became satellites
of the Earth. Some chanced to enter the
orbit of attraction of the Moon. And a
few went off into the unknown reaches
of space. Science-fiction writers were
fond of the plot of a one-way tripper as

the first man to set foot on an alien
planet.

For. despite the discovery of the
spaceship, the Solar System remained
unexplored. Only the Moon and Mars
had been reached, and only the Moon
had been developed. For the explora-
tory voyages to Mars had themselves
been one-way trips of the most fatal sort.

There had been five of these voyages,
and thirty fine men had been lost on
them in vain. The ships had landed ;
that much was almost certain from astro-
nomical calculation and observation.
But there had been no return. The ships
could not carry enough fuel for a two-
way trip: and a small crew gould not
maintain itself long enough on the planet
to accumulate fuel from the known re-
sources there present. Until ships could
be built with greater fuel capacity, or
enough men jolted themselves from their
lethargy of peace, the farther reaches of
space would be known only to those who
never returned.

The possibility that a deliberately one-
way rocket might find a strange landing
place had been considered by the plan-
ners. As a result, the nose was equipped
with repulsion jets which would func-
tion automatically upon sufficiently close
contact with a larger body to effect a
safe landing, and the equipment of the
rockets included a pressure-regulating
breathing suit and indestructible ma-
terials with which to leave a record for
future explorers. '

There were even microbooks in the
rocket, with a small pocket-model
viewer; there was hardly space for a
projector. Every comfort of life, in
fact, except companionship — which
meant, to a man of a world believing so
firmly and truly in the brotherhood of
man, except life itself.

A nineteenth century poet, still read
not only by scholars, wrote of “the
Nightmare Life-in-Death. . . . Who
thicks man’s blood with cold.’’ And it
was this Life-in-Death who had re-
placed Death as the State's reward to
malefactors.

ONE-WAY TRIP

101

Gan Garrett woke feeling as refreshed,
after the dormitol, as a ten-year-old on
a summer morning when school was
over. He started to spring carefree to
his feet, ready to begin a vigorous day,
and only when his movements floated
him about free of gravity did he realize
his situation.

This brought gravity enough to his
thoughts, if not to his body. The days
before the trial had gone by too fast for
him to attain any true perception of
what was happening. And there had
always been the hope that something —

But there was no hope now. Noth-
ing at all forever any more. Nothing
but coursing through space in this rocket
until the carefully calculated end of his
allotted days, a Vanderdecken of the
spaceways.

There would be others out here, too,
others sealed in their rocketlets, cut off
forever from communication with each
other, going their several courses, yes,
even when the inhabitant lay — or rather
floated — dead and the rocket moved on
forever in whatever path the chance
combination for forces had decreed for
it. Space zombies, moving bodies with
the souls dead within them.

These were not cheery thoughts for
waking. He breakfasted off the proper
average ration of concentrates, and
washed them down — to his great sur-
prise and pleasure — with a swig of first-
rate brandy, which he was sure was not
standard one-way equipment.

He wondered how long it had been
since the take-off. Time obviously had
no direct meaning for him any longer,
but still he wondered. He did not know
what the standard dose of dormitol for
the occasion was ; he might have been
asleep anywhere from an hour to a week.
He tried to judge by his unshaven
cheeks ; but his beard was so light and
slow-growing that he could conclude
nothing. Nor did he know the rate of
the rocket. Had he already settled into
a circumterrestrial orbit? Or was he
one of the few who had excitingly es-
caped the Earth’s grasp and shot on-

ward into the unknown? Might he —

That was the one hope. The one no-
tion to cling to, to make life valuable.
He treasured it, but even a prospect as
enthralling as that of being the Colum-
bus of an alien planet must fight a los-
ing battle against pure ennui.

His chronometer had run down dur-
ing his sleep. (He might have deduced
something from that, but he could not
remember, in the recent confusion, when
he had last wound it.) He did not
bother to rewind it. What were hours
and minutes in this temporal vacuum?

He ate when he was hungry, wonder-
ing if his stomach obeyed the calculated
averages. Supposing he should overeat
and be doomed to the death of starva-
tion? But he ate by instinct nonethe-
less. He read occasionally, he maddened
himself with the small stock of cards and
puzzles, he slept when he wanted to —
which was a great deal of the time. He
constructed fantasies of how he would
conquer the alien planet single-handed.

Finally, hours or days or weeks after
he first awoke, he went back to the
brandy bottle- which he had hardly
touched since that breakfast. He finished
it almost at a gulp and threw a magnifi-
cent party in which he entertained in his
narrow quarters all the most enjoyable
people he had ever known and finally
retired to the floating couch, where he
made some momentously significant dis-
coveries as to the erotic importance of
gravity.

Then the repulsion jets automatically
blasted and the rocket braked to a safe
landing on the alien planet. He donned
his breathing suit and tenderly holding
the hand of the swizard girl, he opened
the lock and led her forth to be the
queen of his alien empire.

The strong, pure oxygen of the suit,
headier than the aerous mixture circu-
lated in the rocket, sobered him. The
swizard girl vanished, and so did his
delusions of conquering magnificence.
But drunk or sober, he was indisputably
stepping forth from the one-way rocket
onto the barren soil of an alien world.

102

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

It is reported by one of the older poets
that stout Cortez — by whom he doubt-
less means stout Balboa — with eagle eyes
stared at the Pacific, and all his men
looked at each other with a wild surmise.
This is a somewhat more plausible ac-
count of the discovery of a new world
than that of a composer of much the
same period, who represents Vasco da
Gama, upon his discovery of India, as
bursting into a meltingly noble tenor
aria.

Words do not come, let alone song,
even if your breathing suit permitted you
to utter them. “A wild surmise” is the
exactly right phrase for the magnificent
bewilderment that seizes you.

Not quite consciously, Gan Garrett
checked the readings of the various
gauges on his arm. Gravity low, tem-
perature very low. atmosphere non-
existent. He scanned the pitted desert
on which he had landed, noted the curi-
ous, sharp outlines of the jagged rocks,
the complete absence of erosion on an
airless world. The bright cold light
turned the desert scene into one of those
vividly unreal landscapes which the
dosed eyes sometimes present to the
half-sleeping mind, or into a painting
by that eccentric twentieth century mas-
ter Salvador Dali.

The light— Gan Garrett tilted back his
bead, and the moon shone so brightly
into his visioplate as almost to blind
him. It was an enormous, titanic moon,
of curiously familiar outlines, and its
light, he calculated roughly, was a good
twenty times as brilliant as earthly
moonlight. He turned to the filing cabi-
net of his memory and tried to recall a
planet that possessed a moon like that.
Certainly none in the Solar System.
And, therefore —

The thennocells of his suit did not
prevent a chill from coursing along his
spine. An extrasystemic planet — The
men of Earth still wondered if they
could accomplish translunar trips, if
they could some day safely reach Mars.
And he, the outcast, the one-way trip-
per —

He began the casting up of hasty
plans, and wished that he had left just
a little of that brandy. This sudden
sobriety was uncomfortable.

He knew scientists who would tell
him flatly that a planet without atmos-
phere is incapable of sustaining life, that
he must be alone on this cold spinning
desert world. But to say that life can
only be the carbon-nitrogen-and-oxygen-
sustained life which we know had al-
ways seemed to him anthropocentric stu-
pidity. There might be intelligent life
here which he could not even recognize
as such — worse yet, which could not
recognize him.

He would have to base himself on the
rocket, and from there conduct carefully
plotted tours of exploration until he
could discover — what? At least he had
many many Earth-years yet to do it in.
Should he start now, or wait for the sun,
which would reduce the wear on his
thermocells? Now, at night, he could at
least attempt to draw some conclusions
as to his whereabouts from a .study of
the sky. He would need first of all to
refresh his memory more accurately
from a couple of microbooks. Then —

He was starting back for the lock of
the rocket when he saw them. The suit
was not wired for sound ; he could not
hear what must have been their heavily
clumping approach. For they were in
suits not basically dissimilar to his in
principle, as best one could judge,
though of fantastically cut design like
nothing seen on Earth.

They, or their suits at least, were
android. Bipeds with arms. They
showed no signs of either hostility or
friendliness. They simply advanced,
and a detachment of two or three moved
between him and the rocket.

His mind raced. Men — or things — in
suits on an airless planet meant one of
two things: survivors of an elder race,
driven to an artificial underground or
doomed existence by the deaeration of
the planet and venturing forth thus pro-
tected on its surface ; or explorers, rocket
visitants like himself, but from what

ONE-WAY TRIP

103

strange world? Here in the alien void
to meet yet other aliens —

He was outnumbered. And worse, he
was unarmed, without even his W. B. I.
weapon ; and it was doubtful if the alien
explorers adhered to anything like the
code of Devarupa.

But they made no move to harm him.
They. simply encircled him. Their heavy
awkward bodies moved with surprising
agility — a clue that they, too, came from
a world of heavier gravity. They flowed
about him in utter silence, like an ameba
engulfing a meal. Then they flowed oft"

again, away from the rocket, and Gan
.Garret perforce flowed in their midst.

Garrett had once seen at the museum
a showing of the silent flat pictures which
were the seed from which epics were to.
grow. This procession was like that,
save that the silent movement was
smooth and unjerking, and as unreal as
those relics of the past. It was like a
continuation of his brandy dream, with-
out its fine exaltation.

He flowed along lightly with the alien
creatures, across the barren ground and

104

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

on into an equally barren but more
civilized region. There were roads here,
and domes. Survivors of the elder race,
then, in all probability, rather than ex-
plorers. Somehow that made them more
reassuring. Aliens upon the alien world,
alienness squared, so to speak, would be
too much.

The men under the dome wore no
suits. He had thought “men” rather
tliaif “creatures” involuntarily. For
they were exceedingly like men. Their
costumes were strange, their hair was
weirdly and — he guessed — symbolically
arranged, and the tint of their skins
ranged through half a dozen unearthly
shades; but men they did seem to be.
They talked to each other, and he
wished he were adept at lip reading.
The sounds looked not unlike earthly
ones in formation.

Then he wa*s led through a hall and
into a small room, where only half a
dozen of his captors followed. And
there he decided that this was merely a
continuation of the brandy dream after
all.

For there, facing him. sat a woman
identical in every feature with the girl
who used to call them swizards.

She made a calmly efficient gesture
and said something. His suited guards
withdrew. Numbly, his mind aswirl.
he snagged the ring of his right glove
on the hook at his belt and jerked off
the glove. Now with a hand capable of
free manipulation he could undo his
other vents.

This gesture had bared his identifica-
tion bracelet, and the lovestonite plesio-
saur dangling from it. Fiis eyes had
never left the woman, and now, even
with his scanty ability at lip reading, he
would swear that she exclaimed, “The
swizard ! It’s you !” And he thought
she added, “Well, I'll be damned.”

When he had got his helmet off, the
girl was extending to him what looked
like an ordinary bottle of terrene brandy,
such as he had had on the trip. “Here,"
she said in perfectly familiar speech.

“Hesketh said you like this. That’s
why he had one smuggled into the rocket
for you. He tried to smuggle, in one of
your popguns, but they’re impossible to
get hold of. Drink it up. And leave
me a drop. But you — I can’t get over
it. If it wasn’t for the swizard I'd think
you had a double. The nice prim
academician — ”

“Look," said Can Garrett. “This isn’t
real. It can’t be.” But the brandy un-
deniably was. “ Will you tell me what
goes on? And while you’re at it you
might please fix that screw at the back.
I'm not used to these things.”

“Sure.” said the girl.” Her hands
were nimble. “Well,” she said from
behind his back, “Hesketh told us that
a W. B. I. man was being framed into
a one-way trip and there wasn't any
legal hope of saving him. So we — ”

“Wait a minute. Questions first.
Where am I? Or before that — most
important question — what’s your

name ?”

She came back in front of him. and
he shucked himself out of the suit.
“Maureen Furness. I’m in charge of
public relations at Metropolis — and
other things.” The skin crinkled around
her blue eyes. “I'm glad it's important.”

“Maureen ... I like it. We can dis-
cuss the Furness part later. Now where
am I ?”

“On the Moon, of course. Didn't you
recognize it?”

Garrett kicked himself. The relative
gravity, the absence of atmosphere, the
pitted desert — “But I’ve never been
here before, and what with rockets and
dormitol and the vanishing of all sense
of time, I — ”

Maureen laughed. It was a good,
clear laugh. “So you thought you were
an interplanetary discoverer? Fun.
And what on Earth — or off it — did you
think we were?”

“Things,” he confessed.

“Swell. Maw Riin, the Wicked
Queen of Alpha Centauri. I love that
role."

“But the Moon,” he began. “The

ONE-WAY TRIP

105

Moon doesn’t have a sate! — Oh — ”
he ended lamely, remembering the fa-
miliar shape of its outlines,

“Of course. When we’re facing away
from the Sun, the Earth looks like an
enormous moon. Amazing effect, isn’t
it?”

“And how did I get here and what are
you doing and — I never heard of a
one-way trip ending on the Moon be-
fore.”

“It never did. This wasn't any acci-
dent. But the engineer who fires off
the one-way rockets is one of us. He
aimed it here. We not only wanted to
save you from the frame-up. We
thought a trained W. B. I. man might
come in very useful in the next few days
on the Moon.”

“You keep saying we. But just who
are ‘we’?”

Maureen’s face grew grave. “We
started out as a joke, and now it looks
as though we may mean the salvation
of Earth. We . . . well, I guess you’d
call us a secret society. We don’t have
a name, and we don’t have a ritual or
fancy officers; but that’s what we are.
I don’t know if Hesketh ever mentioned
us or hinted at us?”

“No.” But now Garrett understood
Uranov’s several cryptic allusions to
“some people he knew,” and the signals
with which he had induced Dr. Wojcek
to speak freely.

“It was Mig Valentinez who invented
us, though he was usually too wrapped
up with some artistic or scientific project
to take much part. But he felt that the
peace was going stale. That people were
beginning to accept it as something to
wallow in rather than something to keep
fighting for. So he founded his cru-
saders, to keep fighting the little things,
to keep alive against the small violations
of Devarupa’s thought, the petty inhu-
manities of man to man — maybe even
do a little propaganda and built to where
people could finally unit and fight in
something like the Martian project.

“Then a little while after Mig went
away to be a hermit, we stumbled on

something big: the lovestonite business.
Hesketh says that’s where you come in,
and you know a lot about it. Right?”
“I’ve gathered some. I know what
the weapon is and how it works and
what Stag Hartle is up to and why
Valentinez was killed.”

“You’re sure he was?”

“Hartle admitted it.”

“He was a good guy, that Mig — ”
Maureen said tenderly. “Well, any-
way, you know enough for background
now.”

“Except what you’re doing here. Oh,
that’s right. S. B. said something about
coming up here with Astra Ardless and
a shooting company.”

“Yes.” Maureen’s voice was harsh.
“And that didn't sound funny to you?”
“No. Should it have ? Oh — What
Uranov told me about locations — ”
“Exactly. There are in California
landscaped locations under dome for
every possible type of setting, including
lunar. So why should S. B. go to the
expense of toting a vast number of ex-
tras and all his equipment up here to
shoot the picture under less favorable
conditions? Except for documentaries,
nobody’s made location trips in decades.”
“Then you think — ”

“We think this is what it’s all been
building up to. He’s ready for his big
coup. His first blow is going to be here
on the Moon.”

“Then Hartle’s here?”

“Hartle, hell. S. B. Didn’t you real-
ize that Hartle was just a stooge? This
whole lovestonite racket has been S. B.
from the beginning.”

Garrett took more brandy. “All
right,” he said. “S. B. is set to blow
the top off of things, and we’re going to
stop him. Do I count as one of ‘we’
now ?”

“You do,” said Maureen.

“Then what’s my first duty?”

“Look. This takes a little explain-
ing. The boys that brought you in and
the ones you saw outside are us. But
there’s a lot more extras here, and
they’re not here to function as extras.

106

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

What they are is S. E.’s mercenaries.

“You noticed the fantastic make-up?
They're all supposed to be natives of
Mars when the first spaceship arrived
and nobody but a producer would think
of shooting a Martian picture on a lunar
landscape but the public'll never know
the difference and that’s hardly the point
now, anyway. But in that getup there’s
no recognizing individuals, and we don’t
wear our bracelets most of the time. So
a handful of us are going to slip into the
dome where S. B. is staying — with
Astra installed as empress-elect. We’ll
seem to be just the part of his army.”

“And then—”

“We’ll have a council of war tonight
and get that straight. Hesketh and I
are on the party and two others. Want
to make it five?”

“What do you think?”

“Good. That’s settled. Now come
and meet us.”

As she rose, Garrett gently thrust
her back into the chair. “Just a minute.
The Secretary of Allocation gave me
this swizard to use in starting conversa-
tions about lovestonite. I’m not apt to
find that necessary any more. You like
swizards. Want it?"

“A Kubicek? You’re giving me a
Kubicek swizard? And do I want it?"

He detached the swizard from his
identification bracelet and fastened it on-
to hers. As he leaned over her, her lips
met him halfway. There was a little
more than gratitude in the kiss.

Maureen eventually leaned back and
ran a straightening hand through her
rumbled black hair. “And, by the way,”
she said, “what’s your name?"

Gan Garrett listened to his fellow
extras :

“ He’s what we’ve needed all along —
one strong man to tell us what’s what.”

“Sure. That’s the hell of the State.
There’s a lot of guys running it and who
are they and who cares ?"

“And what are they running it for?
Peace — nuts !”

“What’s peace? Blood and steel,
that’s what we need.”

“You don’t draw blood with these
pistols, though."

“But have you ever got to use one
full strength? Watch a face shrivel up
and burn under it and the eyes go
dead ?”

“And blood or not, they kill if you use
them strong enough. And there’s no
power without killing.”

“Power — That’s ours now.”

“Ours under him.”

“Yeah, sure. Under him — ”

Hesketh Uranov listened to his fellow
extras :

“But my dear fellow, of course I wel-
comed this plan. I was simply so un-
utterably bored — ”

“I know. If they want to maintain
peace, they should never let us study
the past. You read of all those thrilling
events of history, and you begin to won-
der. There’s a strange sort of yearning
goes through your muscles — ”

“Of course the man’s a fool. But if
a fool chooses to provide us with
weapons — ”

. “A tvorld. A whole entire rounded
world. The legions of Caesar never
held anything like that. Even the Nazis
never reached all the way into Asia.
And we — ”

“It’s farewell to boredom now.”
Maureen Furness listened to her fel-
low extras:

“ — and the way it’s changed the men !
Why, everything’s so different it doesn’t
feel like the same thing any more."

“A man really isn’t a man unless he’s
killed somebody, I always say.”

“But isn’t that Ardless woman the
lucky one, though? To be his woman — ”
“When I think of my sister sitting at
home with those three children and that
wishywashy husband of hers, I could
laugh right in her face."

“You know, a friend of mine was
studying the old dialects and there used
to be a word for just what we are. There
used to be women like us, and you know

107

what they called them? Tramp fol-
lowers.”

They forgathered at the appointed
meeting place — Garrett and Maureen
and Uranov and the other one of "us,”
a dark intense young man named Loewe.

"It's astounding,” the epic writer ex-
claimed. "There hasn't been anything
like it since the Twentieth Century.
And for a true analogy you’ve got to go
back further than that — the European
wars of the seventeenth, or even back to
the Roman legions. This dome that's
supposed to house a location company is
an armed camp of mercenaries, ready to
let loose rapine and destruction upon the
world."

"Thev're mad," Maureen protested.
"Thev can do infinite harm for a little
while, but what can this handful hope
to accomplish in the long run?”

It- was Garrett who answered. “You
know from the old medical records what
syphilis could do to an uncontaminated
population, with no resistance to it?
This scourge can act the same way. How
much they'll gain for themselves is
doubtful, but they'll spread the poison
of hatred and killing. The world has
almost forgotten that ; hut the memory
will come back quickly enough."

"And still you know — ” Maureen
sounded ashamed of her own statement.
"These peotple — I know they’re ter-
rible. But somehow they’ve come alive.
There's something in their eyes, even if
the sight of it terrifies 3 ’ou — ”

Uranov laughed. "Still dreaming of
the vigor of the olden days, Maureen?
Well, we've space enough for vigor now.
We've got to learn what their plans are
specifically and circumvent them— very
specifically. And> first — But where’s
Wojcek? He ought to be here by now.”
Loewe spoke. "1 was with him. One
of these . . . these killers had worked in
the lab once. He recognized him in
spite of the body tint and the wig. He
got suspicious. They took him away.
I don't think we'll see him again.”
Garrett swore, Maureen gave a lit-

THE MASTER RETURNS

Yes, the greatest sleuth of them
Nick Carter!

He's back to thrill young and old with hrs
daring exploits ... in a new form . . . radio!

Listen every Tuesday evening at 9:30 EWT
over 208 stations of the Mutual Network to
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NICK CARTER

Heard On Tuesday Evenings Over

THE MUTUAL NETWORK

P. S. If you fellow his adventures in SHADOW
Comics you won't wont to miss this
even greater air series!

108

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

tie stifled choking noise. Uranov said
coldly. “That’s a score to settle.’’

Garrett shook his head. “We can’t
talk of settling scores now. Private
revenge — that belongs to their way of
thought. We're working to frustrate
this movement, and then comes our real
job: to see to it that the peace never
again breeds such a movement.”

“But how?” Loewe protested. “Short
of annihilating this entire camp. We’re
far too few to do that, and even if we
could—”

“No. These men aren’t lost to man-
kind. Remember they’ve grown up in a
world conditioned to the ideals of Deva-
rupa. They’re revolting against those
ideals now because they’re under the
dominatin of a strong leader who ap-
peals to the worst in them ; but that con-
dition is still there, if we reawaken the
ideals.”

“But how?”

“One. problem at a time. First to our
current job: Did any of you find a way
into S. B.’s quarters?”

Each answered in turn, but their an-
swers amounted only to what Garrett
had learned himself: that the sanctum
sanctorum of the chief’s high command
was tightly, impenetrably guarded.

"And you didn’t gather anything of
what his first move is to be?”

"The men don’t know, and they don’t
care. It’s enough for them that a strong
man is going to guide them to loot and
slaughter and vivid excitement. “They’ll
take what comes when he gives the
orders.”

“It all boils down to that, doesn’t it?
One strong man. If we can get at him,
if we can weaken him in any way — ”
“Such,” Uranov suggested, “as kill-
ing him.”

“There are other weapons that will
not so surely turn against us. Maureen,
what did you find out about Astra’s
quarters ?”

“They adjoin S. B.’s, of course.
That’s only practical. She has a dozen
ladies in waiting or harem slaves or
whatever you want to call them; it’s

easy enough for a woman to slip in
there. I did myself, briefly. But the
way through to S. B.’s is through her
boudoir; you couldn’t make it with-
out — ”

“ — Without her help. Exactly. And
that, my dear children, is what we are
now going to obtain. Listen —

“ — And you never know what’s going
to happen to you next,” said the woman
who had learned she was a tramp fol-
lower. “Like last night, there I was
walking along not bothering anybody
unless, like Joe al ways tells me, I bother
people just by walking along, only you
can’t believe a word Joe says, that Moon
pilot, and all of a sudden this big husky
man appears out of nowhere and — ”

She let out a little scream. She had
not expected her narrative to be so
appositely illustrated. This time there
were three men. one for each of her
friends, too. She held her breath and
reminded herself that it was about time
for her to be vaccinated again and she
certainly mustn’t forget, or else —

When she let out her breath again it
was in a sigh of anguish. “Of all the —
To strip off your clothes and then . . .
and then just take the clothes and van-
ish — ” In dazed frustration, she clothed
herself with the male garments which
Gan Garrett had left behind.

The three female-clad figures followed
Maureen unnoticed into Astra Ardless’
apartment. Her ladies in waiting lolled
about in provocative boredom, obviously
longing for the coeducational life out-
side. Garrett looked at them, and be-
gan to understand why certain prere-
quisites were demanded of a male harem
attendant. Maureen coolly walked on
into the boudoir, and the three followed
her.

Astra Ardless sat alone at her dress-
ing table. Her face was in its natural
state while she surveyed the array of
cosmetics before her. Seen thus, it was
a sad face, a lonely face, an old face,
and in an odd way, a more beautiful face

ONE-WAY TRIP

109

than she had ever displayed on the
beams.

Maureen approached her. “Madame
wish a massage?”

She started slightly. “No. Who told
you — Or did I order ... I don’t re-
member — But, anyway, I don’t want
one now. Go away. No, not that way.
That’s—”

Maureen turned back from S. B.’s
door — it had been a ridiculously long
chance, but worth trying— and left the
room. Two of her attendants followed.

Astra Ardless turned back to the
dressing table. She picked up a graceful
bottle, contemplated it, and set it down
again. She looked at her naked face and
shrugged. Then in the mirror she saw
the remaining attendant, and turned. “I
told you to go,” she said imperiously
and yet wearily.

“I cannot go until I have talked with
you,” said Gan Garrett softly.

Astra Ardless snatched up a robe. “A
man! I’ll have you blinded for this —
burned to death even. I’ll — ” Her tone
softened ; there was, after all, something
not unflattering in the situation. "Who
are you?”

He held out his wrist in silence.

“Gan Garrett — ” she read on the
bracelet. “Garrett — But . . . but

you — ” She drew back, half trembling.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I made a
one-way trip.”

“But . . . but nobody ever came back
alive from a one-way trip.”

“No.”

“Then you’re . . . you’re dead?
You’re a — No. No ! Oh, I know the
research societies say there’s some evi-
dence of — But it couldn’t be. There
aren’t ghosts ! There aren’t !”

“I am here.”

She held the robe tight about her
and sought to control her shuddering
body. “Why? What do you want of
me?”

“I have a message for you. A mes-
sage from Emigdio Valentinez.”

“Migdito! No — He’s not — He’s
not what you are, is he ? Is he?”

The shrill tension of her voice, the
hand that reached out to clutch him and
yet was afraid to, the quivering of her
lips left no doubt that Uranov’s bit of
gossip had been right ; and on that Gar-
rett had built his whole campaign. Now
he said, “Valentinez is dead. Stag
Hartle killed him.”

Her lips quivered no longer. They
tightened cruelly. “Hartle killed — ”
Her hands made a little wrenching mo-
tion. It seemed to say, “That settles
Hartle.”

“Stag Hartle killed him — for Break-
stone.”

Her eyes went blank. “Breakstone?
You mean Sacha? He had Migdito
killed by that jackal?”

“Do the dead come back to tell lies?
Valentinez invented the new use of
lovestonite. Breakstone and Hartle
needed it. Valentinez died. Breakstone
has his lovestonite weapons.”

Astra Ardless. said nothing. But her
face was no longer old and sad. It had
a new vigor in it, and the bitterness of
the tragedy that is beyond mere sadness.
She rose and moved toward the door of
the adjoining apartment.

“No,” said Garrett gently. “You can
do nothing alone. You need helpers.
I have brought them.” He moved to
the door to the anteroom and raised his
arm in the prearranged gesture. The
other three returned.

The face of Astra Ardless was the
mask of Electra. Even that of Alecto.
“You will help me?” she said simply,
almost childishly.

“We will help you.”

Then even as they approached the
door, it dilated. Four guards entered,
each with a pistol. The first, in a pure
spirit of fun, discharged the full force
of the weapon into the face of the young
man named Loewe, Avhose shrieks were
already dying into permanent silence
when Sacheverell Breakstone followed
his guards.

“Tut,” said S. B., looking down at the
corpse. “Unnecessary. But harmless.
And how nice of you, Astra, to collect

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

this little group of traitors for me. It’s
a shame that you’ll have to share their
fate, which will probably be long and
unpleasantly ingenious. Of course, I’m
just groping with words, you under-
stand."

Gan Garrett’s hand twitched help-
lessly at the popgun that wasn’t there.

IV.

“You surely didn’t think, did you,”
S. B. went on with leisurely calm, “that
a man of my creative ability could have
been so careless as to leave Astra’s room
unwired? In an enterprise so daring
and significant as mine, one must take
all possible precautions. I have had two
operatives on shifts regularly listening
to this room — save, of course, when I
was in it myself. And you” — he turned
to Garrett — “you certainly do not expect
me to swallow, like Astra, your folderol
about being a ghost? How you escaped
from a one-way trip, I have no notion,
though I intend to learn such a useful
secret before I am through with you;
but I have no doubt that you are solid
and corporeal and alive — for the time
being.”

Garrett answered him with equal
calm. “It was a pretty frame, S. B.,
but the picture stepped out of it. Very
pretty, and quite worthy of you. But I
didn’t expect to find you at the head of
this lovestonite racket.”

S. B. smiled his satisfaction. “So?
You find that you had underestimated
my abilities?”

“Not under. Over. I thought you
were too clever to make such a fool of
yourself. It smelled more like, say,
Hartle’s work to me.”

“Hartle!” S. B. snorted. “That mer-
cenary ! That jackal ! A man of action,
yes, even of a certain contemptible in-
genuity. But what creative power does
he have? Do you think for a minute
that he could conceive and carry out
such a colossal undertaking as this?”

Garrett smiled. “You’re doomed,
S. B. You’re damned. What can you

accomplish with this devilish violence?
Kill off a few hundred people — say even
a few thousand. And then the millions
of mankind will swallow up your little
terrorists as though they had never
been.”

A trace of anger contorted S. B.’s
face, then faded into a laugh. “Poor
idealistic idiot ! My dear Astra, before I
dispatch you and your fumbling confed-
erates to appropriate destinations, I
should like to borrow your boudoir for
a lecture hall. Sit down. Sit down, all
of you. And you boys, keep your trig-
ger fingers steady. Now Garrett, Ura-
ttov, Miss Furness, you are to have the
privilege of hearing the functioning of
a great creative mind.”

Garrett sat down comfortably enough.
He did not need the added illogical re-
assurance of Maureen’s handclasp. Get
S. B. talking, induce him to reveal of his
own accord all they needed to know, and
keep him talking until the opportune
break presented itself. That had been
his hastily contrived strategy, and it
seemed to be working. The man was a
frustrated creator ; Uranov had told him
that, and it was the key to the whole
set-up. And the mediocre, the self-
insufficient creator can never resist an
audience which must perforce admire
him.

“All Sollywood,” Sacheverell Break-
stone began, “acknowledged my crea-
tive-executive supremacy. The Little
Hitler, they called me. And I remember
reading in a biography of that great
man how he could have been a magnifi-
cent painter had he chosen to follow that
line instead of creating in terms of me-
ters and men. Even so, I could have
been a great musician, but I instinctively
turned away from the sterility of such
purely artistic creation. I found my
metier in Sollywood; but even there I
was cramped, strangled by the limita-
tions of peace. The man who would
create with men needs weapons. The
man who would create life must be able
to mete out death.

“I had had my plans for lethalizing

the period weapons of Sollywood — filing
the daggers, clearing the barrels, finding
ammunition somehow through armsleg-
gers — But it was a difficult project.
You men of the W. B. I. and the powers
of the Department of Allocation — I
could have done it. I should have cre-
ated tire means of frustrating you. But
then. Harlle came to me with the in-
spired discovery of Emigdio Valenti-
ne/.”

“You — " Astra Ardless’ voice was
harsh and toneless, hardly recognizable
as human. "You did kill him — ”

“Not quite. Hartle had forestalled
me there. Valentinez was already dead,
though 1 should surely have ordered his
death if he had not been. But why are
you so concerned, my dear? You were
willing to accept a share in an empire
founded on a thousand other deaths, and
yet you boggle at that one as though you
were the idiot Devarupa himself.”

Astra Ardless said nothing. She
looked as .hough only her own death
interested her now.

“This is indeed,” Breakstone went on,
“a brilliant little weapon, which I think
1 may claim the credit of inventing, with
the basis of the few hints of Valentinez
and Hartle. This particular model,” he
brandished the one in his hand, "con-
tains a disk of lovestonite a centimeter
and a half in diameter and a centimeter
thick. It was charged in direct sunlight,
using a fifteen centimeter burning glass
focused on it. It contains approximately
the solar energy of a full day.

"The trigger releases that energy for
one twenty-fifth of a second. This slide
here controls the time of passage. At
this end of the scale, the energy released
in that twenty-fifth of a second is only
enough to daze and blind momentarily.
At this end — ” He concluded the sen-
tence by indicating the scorched fare of
the corpse of Loewe. "It is all weapons
in one, from the gentle stunner to the
conclusive killer. And by its power I
shall create a new world.”

He showed signs of pausing. Garrett
spurred him on with a fresh laugh. "I’m

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City - State

112

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

still amazed at your stupidity, S. B.
What can your few accomplish, even
armed with that?”

‘‘What could five serpents accomplish
in a herd of five thousand rabbits? Es-
pecially if they had the certainty of win-
ning many of those rabbits over to ser-
pentry, and even of equipping them with
fangs ?” *

“A nice metaphor. But, of course,
you're only groping with words.”

“I’ve gone beyond words now, Gar-
rett. It's the deeds of Breakstone that
will change the world.”

“And they are — ”

“Listen, you idiots. Understand how
a man must act to create. Tomorrow'
we take over the Moon. That is simple.
All the life, all the supplies and com-
munications of the Moon center in Luna
City. That we take over, and we need
pay no further heed to the few isolated
scientists and engineers and work crews
that we cut off. Now' we own a satellite.
We take over the spaceport and the
translunar experimental station. We
control the spatial wireless and with
forged messages lure most of Earth’s
spaceships here. We then control a
space fleet.

“Then, at our leisure, we invade
Earth. We have left enough men be-
hind to be our helpful Quislings in this
invasion. The W. B. I. can fight in-
dividual armsleggers, but it is not strong
enough to combat my armed hundreds,
who will soon be thousands. And there
is no other physical force to resist us.
Even those who are strong enough to
resist will be sapped by their own idealis-
tic beliefs. They will not dare to kill
us until it is too late and they have
themselves been killed.

“And then — You know that classic.
‘The Count of Monte Cristo’? I pro-
duced an unimportant epic of it as one
of my first creations. It reaches its high
point when the hero says four words,
which mean all of life to him, as they
must to any man of creative genius.
Four words that have never been true

hefore in all history, but which will find
their truth at last when I utter them:
“The world is mine!”

Garrett was moved to shudder at the
blazing light of S. B.’s eyes, as vivid and
as murderous as a lovestonite flash. But
he forced himself to go on scoffing.
“And you expect your hundreds and
thousands to follow you loyally? Can a
man like you inspire love and loyalty?”
“Love! Loyalty!. Say rather loot
and laziness. They are offered the
privilege of sacking the Earth, and their
lazy souls are spared the necessity of
ever thinking or acting for themselves.”
“They’ll never follow you. The risks
are theirs and the glory is yours.”

“You think not? Then come. To-
night I speak to them. For the first
time I tell them a definite plan. I out-
line the assault upon Luna City. And
you shall hear me speak, and you shall
know for yourself if they will follow me.
Boys,” he said to the guards, “bring
these carefully after me. They are to be
honored guests at the foundation of the
new world.”

Outside, in the public square of this
dome which Breakstone had filled with
his army, the hordes were beginning to
gather, the seething mass of these new
Huns. Inside, in this upper room, S. B.
waited patiently. As a producer-direc-
tor. he had been noted for his sense of
timing. Now with that same sense, he
awaited the exact moment when he
should go out on that balcony and ad-
dress his followers.

The suppression of balconies. Gan
Garrett reflected with bitter whimsi-
cality, may be necessary in a world
which wishes to prevent the rise of dic-
tators.

A guard came in, saluted, and said
“Hartle.”

Sacheverell Breakstone returned the
salute and nodded. “Show him in.”

Stag Hartle came in, wearing an ascot
which was unusually brilliant even for
him — so blinding as almost to eliminate
the need for lovestonite weapons. “Hi.

ONE-WAY TRIP

113

boss,” he said casually. “Just wanted
to — ” His voice dropped as he spotted
Garrett. “Christmas on wheels,” he
muttered. “Ain’t it bad enough to see
a ghost without him being in drag ?”

“Mr. Garrett is no ghost,” said S. B.
“And the female garments are merely
part of a plot of his against me — a plot
which miscarried as grievously as your
attempt to railroad him on a one-way
trip. Clumsy work, Hartle.”

Hartle bridled. “My part of it was
O. K. I’m reliable. And that’s what a
lot of people are finding out now, boss.”

“So? And what does that mean?”

“It means that when I tell ’em there’s
going to be loot and excitement, they
believe me. When you talk big, S. B.,
they begin to wonder what’s in it for
them, or are they all just stooging for
you?”

“So? Goon—”

“It means, S. B., that I’ve come here
with a little proposition before you go
out on that balcony, and there’s a lot of
the boys’ll back me up.” Hartle’s con-
fidence was growing even cockier. "It
means it’d be a very wise idea to put me
in command of this assault on Luna
City. You can stick around with your
big ideas, but leave the practical stuff to
me.”

“So? You wish to relegate me to a
figurehead? Like the ruler of the old
constitutional monarchies, while you —
This is a — shall we say a revolt? You
understand I — ”

“Sure, you’re just groping with
words. Yeah, call it a revolt if you like.
Words don’t count. That’s what you’ve
got to learn.”

“And if I refuse, as I assuredly will ?”

“Then—”

It happened almost too quickly to fol-
low. Hartle’s hand reached toward his
blouse, but before it had more than be-
gun the movement there was a flash from
the hand of S. B. Something that had
been Stag Hartle lay blasted on the floor.
The illegally sharpened knife clanked
from his blouse; the sound of ringing
metal was clean against the anguished

echo of his dying screams.

Sacheverell Breakstone walked over
and picked up the knife. “A singularly
clumsy attempt at assassination,” he
observed. “The fool was hampered by
his old habits. Conventionally, he had
prepared his fingers for the knife with
paraderm ; that was enough to forewarn
me. Now are you content, Astra? I
have punished the murderer of Valenti-
nez.” He spurned the body with his
foot. “Outside, boys,” he said, and ges-
tured to the balcony.

Two guards carried the corpse of Stag
Hartle and tossed it over into the gather-
ing throng. For a moment S. B. stood
where he could be seen from below, the
knife in one hand, the lovestonite pistol
in the other. The visual object lesson
was complete and succinct.

He turned back to the guests in the
room. “You see, gentlemen and ladies,
how simple and effective is the true ex-
ercise of power?”

Maureen Furness had sat through all
this in tense and shuddering silence.
Now at last she spoke. “I used to think
that the old times were more alive, more
exciting. That was before I ever saw a
man die — ”

Breakstone laughed. He seemed to
swell physically to match his magnilo-
quent dreams. His short stocky body in
its comically anachronistic costume
dominated the room. “Leave us,” he
said abruptly to his guards. Then as
they hesitated incredulous, he roared:
“Leave us. You heard me.”

Hesitantly the men left.

The murmur of the gathering mob
was loud from outside the balcony. “In
a moment,” said S. B., “I shall address
my tools of creation. And in this guard-
less moment, you fools shall provide me
with my final proof of power, my last
touch of inspiration. I shall show you
your own impotence and grow strong
on it. There.” He laid his lovestonite
pistol and Stag Hartle’s sharpened dag-
ger on the floor. “I am here, unguarded.
There are weapons. And I am safe be-
cause you — ”

114

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Astra Ardless sprang forward and
seized the pistol. With one almost care-
less blow, Breakstone knocked her aside.
There was a flash as she fell, and she
cried out in pain. S. B. glanced down at
her incuriously. “I had forgotten her;
she does not share your idealism. Only
her dead lover moves her. But she has
now had the courtesy to take care of
herself.

Gan Garrett felt his muscles straining
against his will. He could attack S. B.
weaponless. He could beat him to a
pulp; but to what avail? He could sim-
ply summon his guards back and — De-
struction was the necessity. But can a
man, conditioned from childhood to cer-
tain beliefs, beliefs moreover which he
knows deep in his heart to be the lasting
truth of mankind, can he sacrifice those
beliefs even when they themselves seem
to demand it?

His helplessness seemed to justify
Breakstone’s taunts. And yet would his
action not justify Breakstone even more
profoundly ? And then abruptly he real-
ized how futile even destruction would
be. He needed something more, some-
thing —

“ — and enterprises of great pith and
moment,” Uranov was muttering, “with
this regard their currents turn awry, and
lose the name of action — ”

“Your moment is over,” S. B. an-
nounced. “You have proved your
spiritual castration, and from your im-
potence I have drawn fresh potency.
Now I shall speak to my multitude, and
within the hour we shall have begun our
march upon Luna City. Our two-meter
lovestonite disks — you did not know we
had progressed to weapons of such size
and power ? — shall attack and melt down
the dome of the city, turning the lunar
night into the fatal glare of our new day,
while — ”

Both men seemed to move at once, so
rapidly that Maureen Furness saw for
a moment only a confused blur of move-
ment. Hesketh Uranov had leaped for
the knife, snatching it from the floor and

driving it toward Breakstone’s heart.
But at the same instant, Gan Garrett
sprang between. His right hand caught
Uranov’s, wrenched at the wrist, and
forced the dagger down. His left con-
nected squarely with the point of Break-
stone’s jaw.

Garrett stood looking down at the
sprawled body of the producer-director-
fuehrer. “Failing my popgun,” he said,
“my left is the best instantaneous anes-
thetic I know.”

Uranov rubbed his aching wrist and
grunted. “What good is that? Let me
kill him. I know the consequences. I
know your W. B. I. oath and I know
you’ll take me in and have me sent on a
one-way trip. But my life doesn’t count,
and his death does.”

“Uh-huh. So we kill Breakstone, and
where are we? We’ve still got his
henchmen to reckon with, his gauleiters.
The late Mr. Hartle can’t have been the
only one. And there’s still that mob
outside, hungry for anything that isn't
peace. No, Breakstone knew what he
was doing when he made his big ges-
ture.”

“It was the gesture of a megalomaniac
fool. They all go too far and end by de-
stroying themselves. This gesture was
Breakstone’s invasion of Russia.”

“It’s going to turn out that way, but
he didn’t see that far. It made sense to
him — a psychological trick to bolster his
own morale, and no danger attached.
He knew we were sensible enough to see
that his death couldn’t possibly do any
good.” Garrett crossed to the uncon-
scious Astra Ardless and picked up the
pistol that had marred her vanishing
beauty. “It seems like years I’ve been
on the track of this lovestonite weapon,
and this is the first time I’ve held one in
my hand. Neat little gadget, isn’t it?”

“But what are we going to do ?” Mau-
reen protested. “You say S. B.’s death
couldn’t do us any good. Then what do
we gain by just knocking him out?”

“Listen. You heard him mention two-
meter lovestonite weapons for attacking
cities. I didn’t know they were work-

ONE-WAY TRIP

11S

mg on such a scale. I wonder . . . yes,
they could be terrific. Use a huge alumi-
num-foil mirror for charging them . . .
yes. All right. Remember what he
said about turning the night into a new
day ? Remember what the men out
there are rebelling against and what they
want ?”

The door dilated, and one of Break-
stone's guards stepped in. He found
himself looking straight into Garrett’s
lovestonite pistol.

“Come on in.” Garrett urged politely.
“Right this way. Take his pistol, Ura-
nov, and keep him covered.”

The man’s eyes went to S. B.’s body,
then to Garrett’s face. His mouth half-
opened, but his eyes shifted to Garrett’s
hand and he was silent.

“Good boy,” Garrett commended him.
“I've got a little job for you.”

The man kept his eyes on the pistol
and nodded. He had seen it work on
Stag Hartle.

“And the first thing, if the lady will
please turn away her eyes, is for you to
strip.”

Gan Garrett stood on the balcony, in
the uniform of Breakstone’s personal
guard. His stolen female garments
would not have become him in this cru-
cial moment. Oratory, he felt, did not
become him, either. But oratory was a
necessary weapon of demagogy, and was
demagogy at times perhaps a necessary
weapon to bring him to his own higher
aims ?

The mob. long awaiting its leader,
muttered restlessly. Garrett found the
switch of the speaker, turned it, and be-
gan the most important words he was
ever to say.

“Listen, men. You are gathered to
hear your orders from your leader,”

There was a roar of impatient agree-
ment.

“Very well. I bring you your orders
from your leader. But not from Break-
stone. Breakstone is through.”

There was a furious outcry of pro-
test. The flash of a lovestonite pistol

AST— 8X

seared the wall just to Garrett’s right.
He stepped up the speaker to dominate
the crowd noise and spoke urgently:
“Listen: Would I be here speaking to
Breakstone’s men from Breakstone’s
balcony if he hadn't been bested? And
do you want a leader who can be bested ?
Then listen to me. Hear the new words,
the new orders, the new war."

The murmur of the mob died down
slowly, reluctantly, tie could catch the
dim echo of phrases : “ — might as
well — ” “ — got to find out what goes — "
“ — so what the hell : let’s hear what
he — ”

“Breakstone,” he repeated, “is
through. He was a great leader, but a
blind and foolish one. I offer you a
greater. He planned to lead you on a
great war, but a cruel and pointless one.
I offer you a greater."

There began to be mutterings of wel-
come, almost approbation from the
crowd.

Garrett found his mind unwontedly
praying, praying that this idea would
work and that he might be worthy to
carry it out. “You came with Break-
stone,” he went on, “because you were
not happy alone and in peace. Man de-
mands more than that. He does not
want to be his lonely self ; he yearns for
a great man, a great leader in whom he
can put his trust, tie does not want
peace; lie wants life and action and the
great crusade of war.”

There was a handful of scattered
cheers from below.

“Let me tell you about the crusade
I bring you. See how it dwarfs Luna
City, There were always wars in the
old world because man needed his cru-
sade. Because in wartime there came
new life and new vigor. Because the
weak piping times of peace were not
worthy of man. And now, for these
same reasons, Breakstone was leading
you to war in this our new world. Peace
was not worthy of man — nor was man
worthy of peace. He made peace into
something weary, stale, flat and un-
profitable. While peace, true peace —

116

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“We fight a war ; but in peacetime we
relax into stupid nothingness. We take
what comes, -we wallow in comfort, and
we come alive only for the next war.
We have not yet learned to fight a peace,

“Crusades "do not die when the weap-
ons of war crumble to silence. Every
moment of the true life of man should
be, must be a crusade. In Africa and in
Australia there are black men who have
not yet been brought to full membership
in mankind; there is a crusade. In
Europe and Asia and America, there are
still injustices even under our economic
dispensation ; there is a crusade. Cancer
is dead by now ; but diabetes and tuber-
culosis and Kruger’s disease still claim
their thousands and their tens of thou-
sands ; there is a crusade.”

He was losing the mob; he felt that.
They talked among themselves in hud-
dled groups. There were no more
shouts of acclaim. He lowered his voice
to a pitch of intense resolution and
plunged on to the heart of his offer.

“But those crusades are for the stay-
at-homes, the ones that haven’t yet re-
belled against this stagnant peace. You
want more. You want fame and glory
and wealth and excitement. You want a
world to conquer. Well, it’s yours for
the fighting. I promise you a world. I
promise you — Mars!”

He went on hastily, before they could
react away from the novel idea. “Why
have our trips to Mars failed ? Because
only a few brave men — warriors like
yourselves — dared to make them. The
ships cannot carry enough fuel to return,
and much of what they carry must be
wasted against the cold of the Martian
night. A handful of men cannot do
enough work to extract the fuel we
know is there.

“You are brave, you are daring, and
you are no mere handful. A fleet, an
armada of spaceships can carry you. to
Mars. Lovestonite can ease the fuel
problem, not in the ship itself, but
against the Martian night. Your two-
meter disks will turn that night into
a new day. And there, in this new out-

post of man, there you can fight. You
can fight the cold and the hardships.
You can fight God knows what dangers
of nature lurking there. You will be the
bravest, the most daring, the fightin’est
of men.

“Man has not conquered Mars be-
cause he has been peace-loving and
timorous and sheeplike. Men! Are
you these things ?”

There was a roar of NO! which must
have drowned out the revelry in the
night spots of Luna City if the airless
moon could have carried sound outside
the domes. Warmth flowed into Gan
Garrett. The guess was working. He
hastened on:

“I promised you a greater war. I also
promised you a greater leader. You
need him. You need the greater leader
that bested Breakstone, because only he
can make this new crusade real.”

He saw their eyes raised to him, and
he moved his hand in a gesture of dis-
claimer. “No. I am not that leader.
But I speak for him now. There is a
great man for you to follow. Greater
than Caesar and Napoleon and Hitler,
and immeasurably greater than Break-
stone. Greater even than the infinitely
different greatness of Devarupa. Fol-
low him. Let him lead you to triumph
in the new crusade.”

He waited until there arose clamorous
outcries for the new leader. Then he let
his voice drop until the tuned-down
speaker barely carried it, small and still
over the hushed crowd.

“That man is Man. He alone is the
all-great leader. No single man, no
world-conqueror, no saint, no genius of
art or science, is important beside Man
himself. And Man is all of you — and
each of you. Look within that part of
Man that is yourself, and find there that
part of yourself that is Man. There is
your great man, your strong leader.
Follow him, and fight the crusade of
Mars. Mars was the god of war. Now
he leads the new war of peace !”

The balcony seemed upheld by a
surging wave of jubilant noise.

117

“They didn't get the last of it,” Gan
Garrett said to his friends as he stepped
back into S. B.’s chamber. “For them
I’m the great man on the white horse.
I’ve destroyed a fuehrer to become one.
But they'll learn, and meanwhile I've set
them on the right road. We've a new
world before us.”

Sacheverell Breakstone writhed, and
grunted through the gag that was part
of Garrett’s female costume.

Uranov gestured to him. “I just
thought of another blessing. As a
W. B. I. man. you’re arresting him?”

“Of course. He'll get a one-way trip
for Hartle."

Uranov grinned. “Good. Now I
can write the Devarupa epic without any
words that he's groped with.”

The Devarupa epic, generally accepted
by now as the finest solly ever made, was
released on the same day that the space
armada left for Mars. Its fate, critical
or commercial, did not concern its
author. You don’t worry about epics on
a space crew.

Garrett and Maureen said good-by to
him at the spaceport. “That's why I’m
not going,” Garrett said. “If I led this
magnificent exhibition, if I was even on
it. I’d be fixed forever as a great new
fuehrer. I’m damned if I take the

chance. I’m sinking back into the

anonymity of a good W. B. I. agent.”

Uranov glanced at the loading of the
two-meter disks. “See you soon though.
And I’m the first man ever leaving for
Mars who’s said that with any confi-
dence.”

“Here," said Maureen Garrett ab-
ruptly. She took a lovestonite figure
from her recently altered identification
bracelet. “Take him. He’s been pretty
good luck for us by and large so far.
I want him to make the first two-way
trip.”

The loading was being speeded up.
The crew was impatient for a new
world, and for the new war of peace.

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118

Endowment Policy

by Lewis Padgett

The old gentleman really did want to give
the young man driving the taxi a present.
He wanted to give him the world, freely and
without strings. With a reason, though —

Illustrated by Hall

When Denny Holt checked in at the
telephone box, there was a call for him.
Denny wasn’t enthusiastic. On a rainy
night like this, it was easy to pick up
fares, and now he’d have to edge his cab
uptown to Columbus Circle.

“Nuts,” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Why me ? Send one of the other boys ;
the guy won’t know the difference. I’m
way down in the Village.”

“He wants you, Holt. Asked for you
by name and number. Probably a friend
of yours. He’ll be at the monument —
black overcoat and a cane.”

“Who is he?”

"How should I know? He didn’t say.
Now get going.”

Holt disconsolately hung up and went
back to his cab. Water trickled from the
visor of bis cap; rain streaked the wind-
shield. Through the dimout he could
see faintly lighted doorways and hear
juke-box music. It was a good night
to be indoors. Holt considered the ad-
visability of dropping into the Cellar
for a quick rye. Oh, well. He meshed
the gears and headed up Christopher
Street, feeling low.

Pedestrians were difficult to avoid

these days; New Yorkers never paid
any attention to traffic signals anyway,
and the dimout made the streets dark,
shadowy canyons. Holt drove uptown,
ignoring cries of “Taxi.” The street
was wet and slippery. His tires weren’t
too good, either.

The damp cold seeped into Holt's
bones. The rattling in the engine wasn’t
comforting. Some time soon the old
bus would break down completely. After
that — well, it was easy to get jobs, but
Holt bad an aversion to bard work.
Defense factories — hm-in-w-w.

Brooding, he swung slowly around the
traffic circle at Columbus, keeping an eye
open for his fare. There he was — the
only figure standing motionless in the
rain. Other pedestrians were scuttling
across the street in a hurry, dodging the
trolleys and automobiles.

’ Holt pulled in and opened the door.
The man came forward. He had a cane,
but no umbrella, and water glistened on
his. dark overcoat. A shapeless slouch
hat shielded his head, and keen dark
eyes peered sharply at Holt.

The man was old — rather surprisingly
old. His features were obscured by

ENDOWMENT POLICY

119

wrinkles and folds of sagging, tallowy
skin.

“Dennis Holt?” he asked harshly.

“That’s me, buddy. Hop in and dry
off.”

The old man complied. Holt said,
“Whereto?”

“Eh? Go through the park.”

“Up to Harlem?”

“Why — yes, yes.”

Shrugging, Holt turned the taxicab
into Central Park. A screwball. And
nobody he’d ever seen before. In the
rear mirror he stole a glance at his fare.
The man was intently examining Holt’s
photograph and number on the card.
Apparently satisfied, he leaned back
and took a copy of the Times from his
pocket.

“Want the light, mister ?” Holt asked.

“The light? Yes, thank you.” Blit-
he did not use it for long. A glance at
the paper satisfied him, and the man
settled back, switching off the panel
lamp, and studying his wrist watch.

“What time is it?” he inquired.

“Seven, about.”

“Seven. And this is January 10,
1943.”

Holt didn’t answer. His fare turned
and peered out of the rear window. He
kept doing that. After a time, he leaned
forward and spoke to Holt again.

“Would you like to earn a thousand
dollars?”

“Are you joking?”

“This is no joke," the man said, and
Holt realized abruptly that his accent
was odd — a soft slurring of consonants,
as in Castilian Spanish. “I have the
money — your current currency. There
is some danger involved, so I will not be
overpaying you.”

Holt kept his eyes straight ahead.
“Yeah?”

“I need a bodyguard, that is all.
Some men are trying to abduct or even
kill me.”

“Count me out,” Holt said. “I'll
drive you to the police station. That’s
what you need, mister.”

Something fell softly on the front
seat. Looking down, Holt felt his back
tighten. Driving with one hand, he
picked up the bundle of banknotes and
thumbed through them. A thousand
bucks — one grand.

They smelled musty.

The old man said, “Believe me,
Denny, it is your help I need. I can’t
tell you the story — you’d think me in-
sane — but I’ll pay you that amount for
your services tonight.”

“Including murder?” Holt hazarded.
“Where do you get off calling me
Denny? I never saw you before in my
life.”

“I have investigated you — I know a
great deal about you. That’s why I
chose you for this task. And nothing
illegal is involved. If you have reason
to think differently, you are free to with-
draw at any time, keeping the money.”
Holt thought that over. It sounded
fishy, but enticing. Anyhow, it gave
him an out. And a thousand bucks —
“Well, spill it. What am I supposed
to do?”

The old man said, “I am trying to
evade certain enemies of mine. I need
your help for that. You are young and
strong.”

“Somebody’s trying to rub you out?”
“Rub me . . . oh. I don’t think it
will come to that. Murder is frowned
upon, except as a last resort. But they
have followed me here; I. saw them. I
believe I shook them off my trail. No
cabs are following us — ”

“Wrong,” Holt said.

There was a silence. The old man
looked out the rear window again.

Holt grinned crookedly. “If you're
trying to duck, Central Park isn’t the
place. I can lose your friends in traffic
easier. O. K., mister, I’m taking the
job. But I gol the privilege of step-
ping out if I don’t like the smell.”

“Very well, Denny.”

Holt turned into an underpass. “ You
know me, but I don’t know you. What’s
the angle, checking up on me? You a
detective ?”

120

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

"No. My name’s Smith.”

“Naturally.”

“And you — Denny — are twenty years
old, and unavailable for military duty in
this war because of cardiac trouble.”

Holt grunted. “What about it?”

“I do not want you to drop dead.”

“I won’t. My heart’s O. K. for most
things. The medical examiner just
didn’t think so.”

Smith nodded. “I know that. Now
Denny — ”

“Well?”

“We must be sure we aren’t fol-
lowed.”

Holt said slowly, “Suppose I stopped
at F. B. I, headquarters? They don't
like spies.”

“As you like. I can prove to them I
am not an enemy agent. My business
has nothing to do with this war, Denny.
I merely wish to prevent a crime. Un-
less I can stop it, a house will be burned
tonight, and a valuable formula de-
stroyed.”

"That’s a job for the fire department.”

“You and I are the only ones who can
perform this task. I can’t tell you why.
A thousand dollars, remember.”

Holt was remembering. A thousand
dollars meant a lot to him at the mo-
ment. He had never had that much
money in his life. It meant a stake;
capital on which to build. Fie hadn’t
had a real education. Till now, he’d
figured he’d continue in a dull, plodding
job forever. But with a stake — well, he
had ideas. These were boom times.
He could go in business for himself ; that
was the way to make dough. One grand.
Yeah. It might mean a future.

He emerged at Seventy-second Street,
into Central Park West, and from the
corner of his eye saw another taxi swing
toward him. It was trying to pocket his
cab. Holt heard his passenger gasp and
cry something. He jammed on the
brakes, saw the other car go by, and
swung the steering wheel hard, push-
ing his foot down on the accelerator.
He made a half circle, fast, on West

End, and was headed north.

"Take it easy,” he said to Smith.
There had been four men in the other
taxicab ; he had got only a brief glimpse.
They were clean-shaved and wore dark
clothes. They might have been holding
weapons ; Holt couldn’t be certain of
that. They were swinging around, too,
now, having difficulties with the traffic,
but intent on pursuit.

At the first convenient street, Flolt
turned left, crossed Broadway, took the
clover-leaf into the Flenry Hudson Park-
way, and, instead of heading south on
the drive, made a complete circle and
retraced his route as far as West End.
He went south on West End, cutting
into Eighth Avenue presently. There
was more traffic now. The following
cab wasn’t visible.

“What now?” he asked Smith.

“I ... I don’t know. We must be
sure we’re not followed.”

“Q. K„” Holt said. “They’ll be
cruising around looking for us. We’d
better get off the street. I’ll show you.”
He turned into a parking garage, got a
ticket, and hurried Smith out of the cab.
“We kill time now, till it’s safe to start
again.”

“Where—”

“What about a quiet bar? I could
stand a drink. It’s a lousy night.”

Smith seemed to have put himself
completely in Holt’s hands. They
turned into Forty-second Street, with its
dimly-lit honky-tonks, burlesque shows,
dark theater marquees, and penny ar-
cades, Holt shouldered his way through
the crowd, dragging Smith with him.
They went through swinging doors into
a gin mill, but it wasn’t especially quiet.
A juke box was going full blast in a
corner.

An unoccupied booth near the back
attracted Holt. Seated there, he sig-
naled the waiter and demanded a rye.
Smith, after hesitating, took the same.

“I know this place,” Holt said.
“There’s a back door. If we’re traced,
we can go out fast.”

Smith shivered.

ENDOWMENT POLICY

121

“Forget it,” Holt comforted. He ex-
hibited a set of brass knuckles. “I
carry these with me, just in case. So re-
lax. Here’s our liquor.” He downed the
rve at a gulp and asked for another.
Since Smith made no attempt to pay,
Holt did. He could afford it, with a
thousand bucks in his pocket.

Now, shielding the bills with his body,
he took them out for a closer examina-
tion. They looked all right. They
weren't counterfeit: the serial numbers
were O. K. : and they had the same odd
musty smell Holt had noticed before.

‘‘You must have been hoarding these,”
he hazarded.

Smith said absently, “They’ve been on
exhibit for sixty years — ” He caught
himself and drank rye.

Holt scowled. These weren’t the old-
fashioned large-sized bills. Sixty years.

nuts ! Not but what Smith looked that
old ; his wrinkled, sexless face might
have been that of a decegenarian. Holt
wondered what the guy had looked like
when he was young. When would that
have been? During the Civil War, most
likely!

He stowed the money away again,
conscious of a glow of pleasure that
wasn’t due entirely to the liquor. This
was the beginning for Denny Holt.
With a thousand dollars, he’d buy in
somewhere and go to town. No more
cabbing, that was certain.

On the postage-stamp floor dancers
swayed and jitterbugged. The din was
constant, loud conversation from the bar
vying with the juke-box music. Holt,
with a paper napkin, idly swabbed a beer
stain on the table before him.

122

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“You wouldn't like to tell me what
this is all about, would you?” he said
finally.

Smith's incredibly old face might
have held some expression ; it was diffi-
cult to tell. “1 can't. Denny. You
wouldn’t believe me. What time is it
now?”

"Nearly eight.”

“Eastern Standard Time, old reckon-
ing — and January 10th. We must be at
our destination before eleven.”

“Where’s that?”

Smith took out a map, unfolded it,
and gave an address in Brooklyn. Holt
located it.

“Near the beach. Pretty lonely place,
isn’t it ?”

“I don’t know. I’ve .never been
there.”

“What's going to happen at eleven?”
Smith shook his head, but did not
answer directly. He unfolded a paper
napkin.

"Do you have, a stylo?”

Holt hesitated, and then extended a
pack of cigarettes.

“No, a ... a pencil. Thank you. I
want you to study this plan, Denny. It’s
the ground floor of the house we’re go-
ing to in Brooklyn. Keaton’s labora-
tory is in the basement.”

“Keaton?”

“Yes,” Smith said, after a pause.
“He’s a physicist. He’s working on a
rather important invention. It’s sup-
posed to be a secret.”

“O. K. What now?”

Smith sketched hastily. “There
should be spacious grounds around the
house, which has three stories. Here’s
the library. You can get into it by
these windows, and the safe should be
beneath a curtain about — here.” The
pencil point stabbed down.

Holt’s brows drew together. “I’m
starting to smell fish.”

“Eh?” Smith’s hand clenched nerv-
ously. “Wait till I’ve finished. That
safe will he unlocked. In it you will find
a blown notebook. I want you to get
that notebook — ”

“ — and send it air mail to Hitler,”
Holt finished, his mouth twisting in a
sneer.

" — and turn it over to the War De-
partment,” Smith said imperturbably.
"Does that satisfy you?”

“Well — that sounds more like it. Blit
why don’t you do the job yourself?"

“I can’t,” Smith said. “Don’t ask me
why ; I simply can’t. My hands are
tied.” The sharp eyes were glistening.
“That notebook, Denny, contains a tre-
mendously important secret.”
“Military?”

“It isn’t written in code ; it’s easy to
read. And apply. That’s the beauty of
it. Any man could — ”

“You said a guy named Keaton owned
that place in Brooklyn. What’s hap-
pened to him?”

“Nothing,” Smith said, “yet.” He
covered up hastily. “The formula
mustn't be lost, that’s why we’ve got to
get there just before eleven.”

“If it’s that important, why don't we
go out there now and get the note-
book?”

"The formula won’t be complete until
a few minutes before eleven. Keaton is
working out the final stages now.”

“It’s screwy,” Holt complained. He
had another rve. “Is this Keaton a
Nazi ?”

“No.”

“Well, isn’t he the one who needs a
bodyguard, not you?”

Smith shook his head. “It doesn’t
work out that way, Denny. Believe me,
I know what I’m doing. It’s vitally, in-
tensely important that you get that
formula.”

“Hm-m-m.”

“There's a danger. My — enemies —
may be waiting for us there. But Ell
draw them off and give you a chance to
enter the house.”

"You said they might kill you.”
“They might, but I doubt it. Murder
is the last recourse, though euthanasia
is always available. But I’m not a can-
didate for that.”

Holt didn’t try to understand Smith’s

ENDOWMENT POLICY

123

viewpoint on euthanasia; he decided it
was a place name, and implied taking a
powder.

"For a thousand bucks,” he said, ‘Til
risk my skin.”

“How long will it take us to get to
Brooklyn?”

“Say an hour, in the dimout.” Holt
got up quickly. “Come on. Your
friends are here.”

Panic showed in Smith’s dark eyes.
He seemed to shrink into the capacious
overcoat. “What’ll we do?”

“The back way. They haven’t seen
us yet. If we’re separated, go to the
garage where I left the cab.”

“Y-yes. All right.”

They pushed through the dancers and
into the kitchen, past that into a bare
corridor. Opening a door, Smith came
out in an alley. A tall figure loomed be-
fore him, nebulous in the dark. Smith
gave a shrill, frightened squeak.

“Beat it,” Holt ordered. He pushed
the old man away. The dark figure
made some movement, and Holt struck
swiftly at a half-seen jaw. His fist
didn’t connect. His opponent had shifted
rapidly.

Smith was scuttling off, already lost
in shadows. The sound of his racing
footsteps died.

Holt, his heart pounding reasonlessly,
took a step forward. “Get out of my
way,” he said, so deep in his throat that
the words came out as a purring snarl.

“Sorry,” his antagonist said. “You
mustn’t go to Brooklyn tonight.”

“Why not?” Holt was listening for
sounds that would mean more of the
enemy. But as yet he heard nothing,
only distant honking of automobile horns
and the low mingled tumult from Times
Square, a half block away.

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t believe me
if I told you.”

There was the same accent : the same
Castilian slurring of consonants that
Holt had noticed when Smith spoke. He
strained to make out the other man’s
face. But it was too dark.

Surreptitiously Holt slipped his hand
into his pocket and felt the comforting
coldness of the brass knuckles. He said,
“If you pull a gun on me — ”

“We do not use guns. Listen, Dennis
Holt. Keaton’s formula must be de-
stroyed with him.”

“Why, you — ” Holt struck without
warning. This time he didn’t miss.
He felt the brass knuckles hit solidly
and then slide, slippery on bloody, torn
flesh. The half-seen figure went down,
a shout muffled in his throat. Holt
looked around, saw no one, and went at
a loping run along the alley. Good
enough, so far.

Five minutes later he was at the park-
ing garage. Smith was waiting for him,
a withered crow in a huge overcoat. The
old man’s fingers were tapping nervously
on the cane.

“Come on,” Holt said. “We’d better
move fast now.”

“Did you — ”

“I knocked him cold. He didn’t have
a gun — or else he didn’t want to use it.
Lucky for me.”

Smith grimaced. Holt recovered his
taxi and maneuvered down the ramp,
handling the car gingerly and keeping
on the alert. A cab was plenty easy to
spot. The dimout helped.

He crept south and east to the Bow-
ery, but, at Essex Street, by the subway
station, the pursuers caught up. Holt
swung into a side street. His left elbow,
resting on the window frame went numb
and icy cold.

He steered with his left hand till the
feeling wore off. The Williamsburg
Bridge took him into Kings, and he
dodged and alternately speeded and
back-tracked till he’d lost the shadows
again. That took time. And there was
still a long distance to go, by this cir-
cuitous route.

Holt, turning right, worked his way
south to Prospect Park, and then east,
toward the lonely beach section between
Brighton Beach and Canarsie. Smith,
huddled in back, had made no sound.

124

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

"So far, so good,” Holt said over his
shoulder,, "My arm’s in shape again,
anyhow.**

"What happened to it?”

"Must have hit my funny bone.”
"No,” Smith said, “that was a para-
lyzer. Like this.” He exhibited the
cane.

Holt didn’t get it. He kept driving
till they were nearly at their destina-
tion. He pulled' up around the corner
from a liquor store.

“I’m getting a bottle,” he said. "It’s
too cold and rainy without a shot of
something to pep me up.”

"We haven’t time.”

' "Sure, we have.”

Smith bit his lip, but made no further
objection. Holt bought a pint of rye
and, back in the cab, took a swig, after
offering his fare a drink and getting a
shake of the head for answer.

The rye definitely helped. The night
was intensely cold and miserable ; squalls
of rain swept across the street, sluicing
down the windshield. The worn wipers
didn’t help much. The wind screamed
like a banshee.

"We’re close enough,” Smith sug-
gested. "Better stop here. Find a
place to hide the taxicab.”

“Where? These are all private
houses.”

"A driveway ... eh ?”

“O. K.,” Holt said, and found one
shielded by overhanging trees and rank
bushes. He turned otf lights and motor
and got out, hunching his chin down and
turning up the collar of his slicker. The
rain instantly drenched him. It came
down with a steady, torrential pour,
pattering noisily, staccato in the pud-
dles. Underfoot was sandy, slippery
mud.

"Wait a sec,” Holt said, and returned
to the cab for his flashlight. “All set.
Now what?”

“Keaton’s house.” Smith was shiver-
ing convulsively. "It isn’t eleven yet.
We’ll have to wait.”

They waited, concealed in the bushes
on Keaton’s grounds. The house was a

looming shadow against the fluctuating
curtain of drenched darkness. A lighted
window on the ground floor showed part
of what seemed to be a library. Th®
sound of breakers, throbbing heavily,
came from their left.

Water trickled down inside Holt’s
collar. He cursed quietly. He was
earning his thousand bucks, all right.
But Smith was going through the same
discomfort, and not complaining about it.

“Isn’t it—”

“Sh-h!” Smith warned. "The — -
others — may be here.”

Obediently, Holt lowered his voice.
“Then they’ll be drowned, too. Are
they after the notebook? Why don’t
they go in and get it ?”

Smith bit his nails. “They want it
destroyed.”

"That’s what the guy in the alley said,
come to think of it,” Holt nodded, star-
tled. “Who are they, anyhow?”

"Never mind. They don’t belong
here. Do you remember what I told
you, Denny?”

“About getting the notebook? What’ll
I do if the safe isn’t open ?”

"It will be,” Smith said confidently.
“Soon, now. Keaton is in his cellar
laboratory, finishing his experiment.”

Through the lighted window a shadow
flickered. Holt leaned forward ; he felt
Smith go tense as wire beside him. A
tiny gasp ripped from the old man’s
throat.

A man had entered the library. He
went to the wall, swung aside a curtain,
and stood there, his back to Holt. Pres-
ently he stepped back, opening the door
of a safe.

“Ready!” Smith said. “This is it!
He’s writing down the final step of the
formula. The explosion will come in a
minute now. When it does, Denny,
give me a minute to get away and cause
a disturbance, if the others are here.”

"I don’t think they are.”

Smith shook his head. “Do as I say.
Run for the house and get the note-
book.”

‘‘Then what?**

“Then get out of here as fast as you
can. Don't let them catch you, what-
ever you do,”

“What about you?'*

Smith’s eyes blazed with intense, vio-
lent command, shining out of the windy
dark, “Forget me, Denny! I’ll be
safe.’"

“You hired me as a bodyguard.”

“I’m discharging you, then. This is
vitally important, more important than
my life. That notebook must be in your
hands—”

“For the War Department?”

“For . . . oh, yes. You’ll do that,
now, Denny ?”

Holt hesitated, “If it’s that impor-
tant—’

“It is. It is!”

“O. K., then,”

The man in the house was at a desk,
writing. Suddenly the window blew
out. The sound of the blast was muffled,
as though its source was underground,
but Holt felt the ground shake beneath
him. He saw Keaton spring up, take a
half step away, and return, snatching up
the notebook. The physicist ran to the
wall safe, threw the book into it, swung
the door shut, and pause there briefly,
his back to Holt. Then he darted out
of Flolt’s range of vision and was gone.

' Smith said, his voice coming out in
excited spurts, “He didn’t have time. to
lock it. Wait till vou hear me, Denny,
and then get that notebook /”

Holt said “O. K.,” but Smith was al-
ready gone, running through the bushes.
A yell from the house heralded red
flames sweeping out a distant, ground-
floor window. Something fell crash-
ingly— masonry, Holt thought.

He heard Smith’s voice. He could
not see the man in the rain, but there
was the noise of a scuffle. Briefly Holt
hesitated. Blue pencils of light streaked
through the rain, wan and vague in the
distance.

He ought to help Smith—

He’d promised, though, and there was
the notebook. The pursuers had wanted

— yet The Shadow was determined to walk right
Into danger to take the place of a man he knew
was heading for certain murder!

A billion-doilar Invention was at stake, for which
four different men held part of the formula. And
the part The Shadow had to play was that of mes-
senger, bringing the four parts of the priceless
formula together!

Read MESSENGER OF DEATH, thrilling Shadow
story in the August issue of

The SHADOW

AT ALL NEWSSTANDS

126

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

it destroyed. And now, quite obviously,
the house was going up in dames. Of
Keaton there was no trace.

He ran for the light window. There
was plenty of time to get the notebook
before the fire became dangerous.

From the corner of his eye he saw a
dark figure, cutting in toward him.
Holt slipped on his brass knuckles. If
the guy had a gun, it would be unfor-
tunate; otherwise, fair enough.

The man — the same one Holt had
encountered in the Forty-second Street
alley — raised a cane and aimed it. A
"wan blue pencil of light streaked out.
Holt felt his legs go dead and crashed
down heavilv.

The other man kept running. Holt,
struggling to his feet, threw himself
desperately forward. No use.

The flames were brightening the night
now. The tall, dark figure loomed for
an instant against the library window ;
•then the man had clambered over the
sill. Holt, his legs stiff, managed to
keep his balance and lurch forward. It
was agony ; like pins-and-needles a
thousand times intensified.

He made it to the window, and, cling-
ing to the sill, stared into the room. His
opponent was busy at the safe. Holt
swung himself through the window and
hobbled toward the man.

His brass-knuckled fist was readv.

T •/

The unknown sprang lightly away,
swinging his cane. Dried blood stained
his chin.

“Eve locked the safe,” he said. —Bet-
ter get out of here before the fire catches
you, Denny.”

Holt mouthed a curse. He tried to
reach the man, but could not. Before he
had covered more than two halting steps,
the tall figure was gone, springing lightly
out through the window and racing
away into the rain.

Holt turned to the safe. Fie could
hear the crackling of flames. Smoke
was pouring through a doorway on his
left.

He tested the safe ; it was locked. Fie
didn’t know the combination— so he
couldn’t open it.

But Holt tried. He searched the desk,
hoping Keaton might have scribbled
the key on a paper somewhere. He
fought his way to the laboratory steps
and stood looking down into the inferno
of "the cellar, where Keaton’s burning,
motionless body lay. Yes, Holt tried.
And he failed.

Finally the heat drove him from the
house. Fire trucks were screaming
closer. There was no sign of Smith or
anyone else.

Holt stayed, amid the crowds, to
search, but Smith and his trackers had
disappeared, as though they had van-
ished into thin air.

“We caught him, Administrator,” said
the tall -man with the dried blood on his
chin. “I came here directly on our
return to inform you.”

ENDOWMENT POLICY

127

The Administrator blew out his breath
in a sigh of deep relief.

“Any trouble, Jorus?”

“Not to speak of."

“Well, bring him in," the Administra-
tor said. “I suppose we'd better get this
over with."

Smith entered the office. His heavy
overcoat looked incongruous against the
celoflex garments of the others.

He kept his eyes cast down.

The Administrator picked up a memo-
roll and read: “Sol 21st, in the year of
our Lord 2016, subject, interference
with probability factors. The accused
has been detected in the act of attempt-
ing to tamper with the current proba-
bility-present by altering the past, thus
creating a variable alternative present.
Use of time machines is forbidden ex-
cept by authorized officials. Accused
will answer.”

Smith mumbled, “I wasn’t trying to
change things, Administrator — ”

Torus looked up and said, “Objection.
Certain key time-place periods are for-
bidden. Brooklyn, especially the area
about Keaton’s house, in the time near
1 1 :00 p. m., January 10, 1943, is abso-
lutely forbidden to time travelers. The
prisoner knows why.”

“I knew nothing about it, Ser Jorus.
You must believe me.”

Jorus went on relentlessly, “Adminis-
trator, here are the facts. The accused,
having stolen a time traveler, set the
controls manually for a forbidden space-
time sector. Such sectors are restricted,
as you know, because they are keys to
the future; interference with such key
spots will automatically alter the future
and create a different line of probability.
Keaton, in 1943, in his cellar laboratory,
succeeded in working out the formula
for what we know now as M-Power.
He hurried upstairs, opened his safe,
and noted down the formula in his book,
in such a form that it could very easily
have been deciphered and applied even
by a layman. At that time, there was
an explosion in Keaton’s laboratory and
he replaced the notebook in the safe and

went downstairs, neglecting, however, to
relock the safe. Keaton was killed ; he
had not known the necessity of keeping
M-Power away from radium, and the
atomic synthesis caused the explosion.
The subsequent fire destroyed Keaton’s
notebook, even though it had been
within the safe. It was charred into
illegibility, nor was its value suspected.
Not until the first year of the twenty-
first century was M-Power rediscov-
ered.”

Smith said, “I didn’t know all that,
Ser Jorus.”

“You are lying. Our organization
does not make mistakes. You found a
key spot in the past and decided to
change it, thus altering our present. Had
you succeeded, Dennis Holt of 1943
would have taken Keaton’s notebook
out of the burning house and read it.
His curiosity would have made him
open the notebook, tie would have
found the key to M-Power. And, be-

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128

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

cause of the very nature of M-Power,
Dennis Holt would have become the
most powerful man in his world time.
According to the variant probability line
you were aiming at, Dennis Holt, had
he got that notebook, would have been
dictator of the world now. This world,
as we know it, would not exist, though
its equivalent would — a brutal, ruthless
civilization ruled by an autocratic Den-
nis Holt, the sole possessor of M-Power.
In striving for that end, the prisoner has
committed a serious crime.”

Smith lifted his head. “I demand
euthanasia,” he said. “If you want to
blame me for trying to get out of this
damned routine life of mine, very well.
I never had a chance, that’s all.”

The Administrator raised his eye-
brows. “Your record shows you have
had many chances. You are incapable
of succeeding through your own abili-
ties ; you are in the only job you can do
well. But your crime is, as Jorus says,
serious. You have tried to create a new
probability present, destroying this one,
by tampering with a key-spot in the
past. And, had you succeeded, Dennis
Holt would now be dictator of a race
of slaves. Euthanasia is no longer your
privilege ; your crime is too serious.
You must continue to live, at your
appointed task, until the day of your
natural death.”

Smith choked. “It was his fault — if
he’d got that notebook in time — ”

Jorus looked quizzical. .“His? Den-
nis Holt, at the age of twenty, in 1943
. . . his fault? No, it is yours, I think —
for trying to change your past and your
present.”

The Administrator said : "Sentence
has been passed. It is ended.”

And Dennis Holt, at the age of ninety-
three, in the year of our Lord 2016,
turned obediently and went slowly back
to his job, the same one he would fill
now until he died.

And Dennis Holt, at the age of
twenty, in the year of our Lord 1943,
drove his taxi home from Brooklyn,
wondering what it had all been about.
The veils of rain swept slanting across
the windshield. Denny took another
drink out of the bottle and felt the rye
steal comfortingly through his body.

What had it all been about?

Banknotes rustled crisply in his
pocket. Denny grinned. A thousand
smackeroos ! His stake. His capital.
With that, now, he could do plenty —
and he would, too. All a guy needed
was a little ready money, and he could
go places.

“You bet!” Dennis Holt said em-
phatically. “I’m not going to hold down
the same dull job all my life. Not with
a thousand bucks — not me!”

THE END.

IN TIMES TO COME

The feature novelette for next month — practically a complete novel in itself ; it’s thirty
thousand words — will be “Attitude,” by Hal Clement. Like most of Clement’s stories, it's a
detailed working out of a neat problem: how to plan and carry out an escape when captured
by a people who show every evidence of a well-developed ability at mind reading. And an-
other neat problem for the would-be escapers to solve ; why do the captors seem perfectly
willing to permit them to plan, scheme, build gadgets and weapons, get all ready— and then
step in and confiscate things at the last moment, when only the final break remains to be made?

There’s the conclusion of Willy Ley’s story of the end of the German Rocket Society, too.
One of the most interesting parts of his discussion is the final summary, in which he states
that there is no further reason for the organization and existence of a rocket society. And
shows why. The German Rocket Society — up to the time it was smashed by the Nazis — was
doing genuine, valuable engineering research; it was to rocket engineering something as the
Amateur Radio Relay League is to radio engineering. Radio hams will fully appreciate that;
to the uninitiate, it may better be understood if it is realized that the radio amateur experi-
menters did more toward opening up for use the ultra-high-frequency radio bands than any
commercial organization.

And there will be the conclusion of C. L. Moore’s "Judgment Night.” When I read it
first myself, I felt the last half was the best of it — and the last single page carries an impact
equal to all the rest of the story 1 It’ll stay with you for several days — I’ll guarantee.

The Editor.

120

M 33 In Andromeda

by A. E. van Vogt

It wasn't intelligence that permitted the crea-
ture to rule a galaxy. It had other ways of
accomplishing that — and of making life ex-
ceedingly precarious for interstellar explorers .

Illustrated by Williams

The night whispered, the immense
night of space that pressed against the
hurtling ship. Voiceless susurration it
was, yet somehow coherent, alive, deadly.

For it called, it beckoned and it
warned. It trilled with a nameless hap-
piness, then hissed with savage, unthink-
able frustration.

It feared and it hungered. How it
hungered! It died — and reveled in its
death. And died again. It whispered
of inconceivable things, wordless, all-
enveloping, muttering flow, tremendous,
articulate, threatening night.

“This is an opinion,’’ said somebody
behind Morton. “The ship ought to go
back home.”

Commander Morton did not turn from
the eyepiece of the telescope* through
which he was peering. But he found
himself waiting for others of the score
of men in the control room, to echo the
empirical . statement of him who had
already spoken.

There was only silence. Very slowly,
then, Morton forgot the spectators, and
concentrated on the night ahead, from
which the disturbing sibilation was com-
ing, stronger with each passing minute.

Lights were out there, a great swirl of
them, an entire galactic system. Lights
still so far away that the electronic tele-
scope could only brighten, could not be-
gin to enlarge the needle-sharp points
of brilliance that made up the myriad
units of the wheel-shaped universe.

Morton grew conscious of Gunlie Les-
ter turning away from the other eye-
piece; the astronomer said in a blank
tone :

“Nothing, absolutely nothing. Ba-
sically, that system of stars looks no dif-
ferent from our own great galaxy. The
thing is incredible. Vibrations almost
palpably strong, overflowing the entire
space-time continuum of a galaxy with
two billion suns.”

He stopped, finished more quietly:
“Commander, it seems to me this is not
a problem for an astronomer.”

Morton released his own eyepiece,
said grimly; “Anything that embraces
an entire galaxy comes under the cate-
gory of astronomical phenomena. Or
would you care to name the science that
is involved ?”

Gunlie Lester said nothing : and Mor-
ton turned toward the men who sat in

130

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

the cluster of seats alongside the chro-
matic splendor that was the control
board. He said:

“Someone suggested a few seconds
ago that we turn around and go home.
I would like whoever did so to give their
reasons.”

There was no reply ; and, after a lit-
tle. that was astounding. Morton
frowned at the very idea that there was
anyone aboard unwilling to acknowl-
edge an opinion however briefly held,
however quickly discarded.

He saw that the others were looking
at him: and several of the faces had
startled expressions on them. It was
the long, thin, bony Smith who said
finally, 'diffidently :

“-When was this statement uttered,
chief? I don’t recall hearing it.”

"Nor 1 !” echoed half a dozen voices.

“Eh !” said Morton sharply. Ab-
ruptly, he was tense, alert ; his great
shoulders squared ; his eyes narrowed
to steel-gray pin points. His voice
rapped across the silence :

"Let me get this straight. There was
such a statement, or there wasn't. Who
else heard it? Raise hands.”

Not a hand came up ; and Morton
held himself stiff as a board, said tautly :

“The words spoken were, as I remem-
ber them : 'This is an opinion. The ship
should go home.’ Notice the unusual,
the almost formal phrasing. There is
suggestion in that wording of something
alien striving to be casually human.

“I admit,” he went on, "that is a great
deal to educe from such small evidence,
but in moments of crisis quick opinions
are better than none at all.”

His gaze, steady and cold, swept the
thoughtful faces before him. He fin-
ished quietly :

“I think, gentlemen, we had better
face the fact that we have entered some-
body elsc’s stamping ground. And it’s
SOME somebody.”

There was silence in the control room.
But Morton noted with satisfaction that
it was a silence of tight-lipped tensing

against danger. He said softly :

“I am glad to see that no one is even
looking as if we ought to turn back.
That is all to the good-. As servants
of our government and our race, it is
our duty to investigate the potentialities
of a new galaxy, particularly now that
fhe dominating power in the new sys-
tem knows it'c exist. Its ability to pro-
ject a thought into my mind indicates
that it has already observed us, and,
therefore, knows a great deal about us.
We cannot permit that type of knowl-
edge to be one-sided.”

He finished on a harder tone: "I
should say we were very wise indeed to
spend seven months in the space between
our galaxy and this one repairing the
damage caused by that scarlet beast.
There was some suggestion, 1 believe,
of heading for a planet, and doing our
fixing up in more congenial surround-
ings. In our wisdom, we played safe —
But now, Kellie, as our sociologist, what
do you think of the environment we’re
heading into?”

His gray gaze fixed on the bald-
headed man, who adjusted his pince-nez,
and said :

“That’s a large order, commander.
But 1 would say we are merely entering
a civilized galaxy, and these whispers
are simply the outward signs like com-
ing out of a wilderness into an area
under cultivation.”

" Some cultivation,” said Smith in a

mournful tone. He hunched his long.

bony body back into his seat. “Beg

your pardon. As a biologist, I haven’t

any business in this conversation.”

“You have every business,” said Mor-
ton. "This is life with a capital L. But
go on, Kellie.”

Kellie said: “Remember, man, too,
has left his imperishable imprint on his
own galaxy. If he desires he can light
fires that will be seen a hundred galaxies
away ; at his touch suns flash into Nova
brilliance; planets leave their orbits,
dead worlds come alive with green and
wonderful verdure; oceans swirl and

M 33 IN ANDROMEDA

131

rage where deserts lay lifeless under
blazing suns.

“And even our presence here in this
great ship is an emanation of man’s
power, reaching out farther than these
vibrations around us have ever dared to
go.”

The long-faced Smith gave a dry
laugh, said : “Man’s imprints are almost

always linear. When he acts in three
dimensions, he is restricted to planets,
and even there, he is, for all practical
purposes, confined to the flat bosom of
the land. His ships that cross the sea
leave a gentle swell, which merges with
the tide and, after an hour, cannot be
traced by the finest instruments in the
universe.

AST— 9X

132

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

"His ships that fly the air likewise
leave no trail in the wind. When they
have passed, they might as well not have
been for all the record they make.

“How can you, therefore, speak of
such things in the same breath with this ?
Man, these pulsations are alive. We
can feel them ; and they mean some-
thing ; they’re thought forms so strong,
so all-pervading that the whole of space
whispers at us.

“This is no tentacled pussy, no scar-
let monstrosity, no single entity, but an
inconceivable totality of minds speaking
to each other across the miles and the
years of their space. This is the civiliza-
tion of the second galaxy ; and if a
spokesman for that galaxy has now
warned us to go away, all I can say is
we’d better watch out.’’

Kellie said : “Merely a different form
of imprint. Man — ugh!”

The exclamation had in it a terrible
quality of- dismay. As Morton stared at
the sociologist in amazement, Kellie
snatched his atomic gun. He was not a
young man, but the speed of that draw
showed reflexes of spring steel.

Almost straight at Morton, the in-
tolerable energy from that gun belched.
There was a thunder howl of agony be-
hind Morton, then a crash that shook
the floor.

The commander whirled, and stared
with a sense of insanity at a thirty-foot
armored beast that lay half a dozen feet
to one side of him. As he stood there,
half-paralyzed, a red-eyed replica of the
first beast materialized in midair, and
landed with a thud ten feet away. A
third, devil-faced monster appeared, and
half slid off the second, rolled over and
over — and got up, roaring.

A second later, there were a dozen of
the things.

As the first attack came, Morton drew
his own gun, and, desperate, leaped to-
ward the others, who were backed
against the towering control board.

Guns raged even as he reached them.
The beast roaring redoubled in inten-

sity ; metallike scales scraped metal walls
and metal floors ; claws rattled and paws
thudded.

Morton paid no attention to the firing,
or the frightful bellowing. Ignoring any
possible danger from the side, he ran
along the lowest tiered walk ; and, in a
moment had throw’ll the switch that
activated the multiple energy screen
around the outer walls of the ship.

As he turned to help his friends, a
hideous shadow loomed beside him. Too
late he brought up his gun. A three-
foot mouthful of eight-inch teeth lashed
forth to embrace him — and dissolved
in a spray of violet fire from a gun
somewhere to Morton's left.

A minute after that, the fight was
over; and Morton turned to the young
man who had saved his life.

“Thanks, Grosvenor,” he said quietly.
“That w’as fast, efficient work. If that
is what Nexial training does for a man,
I’ll have to see to it that more of it is
put into use around this ship.”

The young Nexialist flushed. “I’m
afraid my training had nothing to do
with the fact that I happened to turn
and see your danger. Besides —
“Besides, you were the efficient one,
sir. By throwing the multiple energy
screen around the ship, you prevented
more of the beasts from getting through.
And, after that, naturally, it was simple
for us to kill those already inside.”
Morton smiled, and put his great arm
across the young man’s slighter shoul-
ders. Here was, he realized now that
the immediate danger w r as over, an op-
portunity not to be missed.

Grosvenor was a problem. He was
the first of the new, young supermen — -
so the radiopress called the graduates of
Nexial training— but just what to do
with him, how to use his all-around
qualifications had been a puzzle from the
day he was posted aboard the ship.

The Space Beagle swarmed with ex-
perts, who knew so much about their
special subjects that they could not but
regard a Jack-of-all-trades as an in-
complete development.

M 33 IN ANDROMEDA

For the first part of the trip, Gros-
venor had absolutely nothing to do.
Morton had noticed him occasionally, a
lonely, aloof young man who existed on
the outermost fringes of the ship’s vio-
lent intellectual life. When the assis-
tant of the astrogeologist was killed by
a scarlet monster that boarded the ship,
Grosvenor agreed to be substitute. But
he did so without comment, seemed in-
stead to withdraw further into his shell
of reserve. He —

Morton forced the brief reverie out of
his mind. “O. K.,” he said, “we were
all heroes. But now let’s see what we’ve
got here.”

He did not let go of the young man,
but drew him along, diffidence and all.
They treaded their way gingerly among
squirming remnants of monster bodies,
Morton issuing orders in his quietest
voice.

He fell silent finally, as a quaver of
reaction set in. He thought : This must
be a dream ; it couldn’t be real. These
things transported alive across light cen-
turies !

But a sick odor thickened the air. He
kept slipping on the bluish-gray slime
that was beast blood. The shiningness
of disintegrated matter mingled with the
air he breathed, bringing a sense of suf-
focation.

It was real, all right.

As Morton’s commands bore fruit,
cranes floated in, and began to remove
carcasses, communicators buzzed with a
crisscross of messages; and finally the
picture was complete.

The reptilian creatures had been pre-
cipitated only into the control room.
The Sensitives registered no material
object, such as enemy ship, or anything
similar. The distance to the nearest star
on the outer fringe of the second galaxy
was a thousand light years, two hours
journey at top speed.

Around Morton, men cursed as those
scanty facts penetrated.

"A thousand light years!” Selenski,
the chief pilot, ejaculated. “Why, we

133

can’t even send astroradio vibrations
that far.”

Another man said sharply: “Really,
Commander Morton, is it wise to spend
time and energy clearing up this mess,
and generally concentrating on the inside
of the ship, when it is the outside that
matters? Come to think of it. you
seemed to lose all interest in the outside
the moment you had thrown the switch
activating the multiscreen. Extremely
dangerous, in my opinion.”

Morton half turned, wearily. He was
startled to realize that the criticism
jarred him. He thought : “I’m upset,
and if I am, so are the others.”

Consciously squaring his great shoul-
ders, he faced his critic, a construction
technician, named Delber, a tall man
with glasses. Morton said strongly :
“Are you serious?”

The other frowned. “Why, y-yes. A
detailed study of space segments for
trivia effects would seem simple pre-
caution. This thing is BIG.”

Morton said: “Do you realize that
the multiscreen is the greatest defense
ever devised by man ? Either we can
move behind its protecting vault calmly
oblivious of all extrania, or else nothing
can protect us.”

Beside Morton, Grosvenor said
fiercely to Delber :

“That screen, sir, is flawless not only
mechanically but mathematically. It
provides an infinite overlapping series;
and that’s a literal statement of its ac-
tion.”

The objector bowed sardonically first
to Grosvenor, then to Morton. “In the
face of such an ardent argument from
one who knows all about every subject,
I yield my opposition.”

Grosvenor flushed, then turned pale
before the satire. He walked off rap-
idly to one side. Morton half started
after him, then stopped himself.

This was no time to nurse the sensi-
tive ego of a bright young Nexialist. A
council of war was the imperative neces-
sity of the moment.

134

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

When the men were assembled, Mor-
ton pushed his bulk along one of the
control board tiers overlooking the
room. He began :

“We’ve gotten ourselves into quite a
mess; and we’re going deeper. I need
hardly point out that for one ship to
confront a galactic civilization of any
real proportions has no relation what-
ever to our past dangers from individual
super beasts.

“For the moment, we're safe behind
our superb defenses, but the nature of
the menace requires us to set ourselves
limited objectives. Not too limited. We
must find out why we are being warned
away. We must discover the nature of
the danger and of the intelligence be-
hind it, and it is just possible we can
interpret up to a point what has hap-
pened. The facts are as follows :

He enumerated them briefly: The

mind whisperings, the mental warning,
the attack on the control room only —
He finished :

“I see our chief biologist is still ex-
amining our late adversaries. Smith,
what kind of beasts are they?’’

Smith turned from one of the mon-
sters. “Purest primeval reptile,’’ he
said briskly. “Earth could have pro-
duced their type during the dinosaur
age. Judging by the two brains I’ve cut
out, intelligence is about point oh four.”
Morton frowned. He said finally,
slowly: “Gourlay tells me, the beasts
must have been precipitated through
hyperspace. I’m sure he can tell us how
this will affect our entire offensive and
defensive position. Go ahead, Gourlay.”
Morton waited, quietly, his gaze ex-
pectantly on the slouched figure of the
communications expert. Abruptly, he
was startled. Gourlay, the great man
of the ship next to Kent — that Gour-
lay slow in responding. Perhaps better
than anyone on the ship, Morton knew
the extraordinary man, whose drawl
and surface laziness concealed a mind
that was chain lightning. If the infor-
mation, the capacity for counteraction
existed, Gourlay would know about it;

and it would be there on the tip of his
tongue, slow, concise, immensely co-
herent. He —

Gourlay was straightening; and Mor-
ton breathed again. “Hyperspace,”
came the familiar drawl, “is not strictly
an energy field, though there is a rela-
tion. You all know what space is: a
tension in time ; the function involved is
roughly time plus an environment of the
basic energy deka.

“Somebody once likened the result to
the skin of an expanded balloon ; for-
tunately, when pricked, this balloon re-
pairs itself, taking- eons of time in the
emptiness of space, but quickly when
there is a gaseous envelope like the
atmosphere of a planet surrounding the
break. However, the atmosphere re-
quired does not have to be dense. So
long as there is something, a gap in
hyperspace is repaired in a few mo-
ments.

“Men have made considerable effort
to use hyperspace, but the great draw-
back has been the need for gas around
the outlet and inlet. Otherwise, there
is a catastrophic explosion, which re-
duces all matter in the vicinity to time
plus deka.”

He stopped there; and it was several
seconds before it struck Morton that he
was finished.

“Just a moment,” the commander said
hastily, “we all know that man uses
hyperspace in planet to planet transmis-
sion of material objects. Why shouldn’t
he, therefore, be able to transmit from a
planet to this ship ? After all, we’ve got
an atmosphere inside here.”

Gourlay said: “The problem of fo-
cusing a hyperspace transmitter on a
ship whose speed is measured in light-
year units involves about nine hundred
thousand dimensions, mathematically
speaking. Accordingly, it’s impossible
even theoretically. I think that should
answer all your questions.”

Having spoken, Gourlay leaned back
and closed his eyes. Morton waited, but
there was no further sign from the man.

The whole effect was unpleasantly un-

M 33 IN ANDROMEDA

135

satisfactory; and Morton, who had a
very sharp sense of human reaction to
bad news, said coolly:

“Obviously, there’s no one in the
world that much smarter than we are.
There must be simple solutions to the
problem of hyperspace which our scien-
tists missed out on.

"No doubt, of course, that these be-
ings have got a lot on the ball, .but they
haven’t penetrated the multiple energy
screen around the Space Beagle. On top
of that they pulled the damnedest, dumb-
est trick in attacking us with a bunch of
mindless monsters, when they could have
taken the ship by using a more intelli-
gent and organized attacking force, and
exploiting their initial surprise to the
full. And, finally, they must be scared
stiff of our finding out something dan-
gerous if they don’t even want to let us
into their galaxy.”

“Look, Morton,” said a bass-voiced
man, "if that little pep talk is designed
to brace up our morale, you’d better
think again. The fact is we’re up against
something so big we can’t even imagine
it. Let’s start from there.”

It was, Morton reflected grimly, a
damned low starting point.

He stood for a moment, then, a brood-
ing giant of a man. His heavy face was
dark with the determination that was
growing into it. He said finally:

“I don’t accept that pessimism so
completely. We’re alive. That’s proof
that we’re not pushovers to whatever is
out there.”

Slowly, he relaxed. He waved one
great hand toward a group of men who
sat at his left. He said:

“I see our military expert sitting well
to the forefront over there. He’s had
about point oh four work to do since
this voyage started, but I think we can
use his knowledge at last. What do you
make of the attack, Dysart?”

Dysart was a medium-sized, oldish
man with a lined face and a bushy beard.
He had a sour voice. He said :

“If the objective was our destruction,
it failed one hundred percent. If the
intention was to scare us, the assault
was a smashing success.”

There was a little flurry of laughter,
and Morton smiled with a grim satis-
faction at the relaxing of tension In the
enormous, domed room. He waited a
moment, then said :

"Supposing the intention was not de-
struction.”

Dysart looked abruptly more serious.
“I see this affair as a progression of
warnings. First, there was a mental
warning, now has come a concrete warn-
ing.”

His expression grew darker, and the
sour rasp in his tone took on a more
resonant quality :

“I will not speculate on the purpose
behind the warnings. But I think we
can safely draw the conclusion that the
beasts were symbols of a remorseless
and murderous determination, and that
the purpose behind them was no mere
friendly advice to get out.”

“There is no doubt,” said a small man
at the back of the room, “that a great
effort is being made to get us to turn
around and go back home — alive!”
Morton called: “Come on out here,
Kent, and explain that.”

He frowned in puzzlement as the little
chemist pushed forward from his seat.
Morton regarded Kent as the smartest
man on the ship, but the significance of
the scientist’s words completely escaped
him.

In a ringing voice, Kent began : “It’s
possible I have the wrong slant on
things, but I always look for ulterior
motives. You people see an effort to
keep us away from the galaxy we are
approaching. My mind instantly jumped
to the possibility that our friend out
there would like to know where we came
from.”

Morton said slowly: “Maybe you’ve
got something there, Kent.”

Kent continued : “Just look at it
from — his — point of view. Here is a

ship approaching from a certain general
direction. In that direction, within ten
million light years, are a large number
of nebulae, star clusters, star clouds.
Which is us?”

There was a dead silence in the room.
Morton had the queer feeling that men
were shuddering, each from his own
mental picture of the hell that could be
here. It was Smith who said finally
in a gloomy voice :

“What would you suggest, Kent?”

The little chemist replied promptly:
“Destruction or scrambling of all identi-
fication star charts or pools. Gunlie
Lester, his assistant and all the people
aboard who have too much astronomical

knowledge in their heads to wear space-
suits with energy guards whenever and
wherever we land.

“It is possibly already too late. We
know that the creature has been poking
around in Morton’s brain, and God only
knows how many other minds he’s ran-
sacked. We’d better start exploring
this galaxy at top speed, and we'll be
wise to see to it that nowhere along the
line does our enemy have even an edge-
wise chance to study us again.”

He broke off. “Morton, when do we
get to the nearest star of this galaxy ?

“Approximately three hours,” said the
commander.

The meeting broke up in silence.

M 33 IN ANDROMEDA

137

The first sun grew big out of space, a
ball of light and heat, burning furiously
into the great night, and supporting
seven planets.

One was habitable, a world of mists
and jungles and nightmare beasts. They
left it, unexplored, after flashing low
over an inland sea, across a great con-
tinent of marsh and ‘fungi growth.

Left it because, as Morton said : “We
have set ourselves an objective: to find
the nature of the intelligence that domi-
nates this galaxy. Conceivably the clues
may exist in the fastness of the jungle
below — I wouldn’t be surprised if the
beasts that were precipitated into the
control room came from there — but I
think we should search for a more
civilized source of evidence.”

Lonely and remote were the suns at
this distant rim of the galaxy. They
spun on their courses, aloof, like glow-
worms on a clouded night, in their rela-
tion one to the other. Three hundred
light years, the Space Beagle sped, and
came to a small red sun with two planets
crowding up close to its cherry-red
warmth.

One of the two planets was habitable,
a world of mists and jungles and night-
mare beasts. They left it, unexplored,
after darting down low over a , marshy
sea and a land choked with fungoid
growth.

There were more stars now ; a sprin-
kle of them daubed the near distance of
the next hundred light years. A large,
blue-white sun sporting thirty-seven
planets attracted the superbly swift
Earth ship.

The great machine spat out of space,
raged past seven planets that were burn-
ing hells, spiraled toward the three close-
together planets that were habitable —
and flicked off into the night with its
startled crew.

Behind, three steamy jungle planets
swirled in their separate, eccentric or-
bits around the hot sun that had spawned
them. “Identical triplets, by God !”
Gunlie Lester exploded on the general
communicator. “Morton, the axial tilt

of those planets was a design to regulate
their heat to the requirements of a jun-
gle world. Somebody’s deliberately cre-
ating primeval planets. If the next sun
has a jungle world also, I think we’d
better investigate.”

The fourth star was Sol-size, Sol-
type. Of its three planets, one made a
neat orbit at eighty million miles, a
steaming world of jungle and primeval
seas.

The Space Beagle settled through that
gaseous envelope and began to fly along
at a low level, a great, alien ball of
metal in a fantastic land.

In the geology lab, Grosvenor watched
the bank of instruments that registered
the nature of the terrain below. Par-
ticularly, he stared with strained atten-
tion at the density recorder needle as it
shifted along its thin range of mud,
stone, clay, mud, water, fungi —

The needle jumped like flame in high
wind — steel, clay, concrete, steel.

Steel!

Grosvenor reacted. His hand snatched
up at the geared alarm, and tugged with
the frantic sense that it was his strength
that must stop the mighty ship. He let
go only when the voice of Jarvis, his
superior, rasped beside him, reporting to
the control room :

“. . . Yes, Commander Morton, steel
not just iron ore. Our instruments are
registering developed metal, not nature
in the raw. Depth? . . . What’s the
depth there, Grove?”

“T-ten, twenty, f-fifty feet!” Grosve-
nor stammered. Inwardly, he cursed
the way his heart was pounding, caught
his voice into a stiff bar of sound. “It
varies, and it’s spread over a wide area.”

Jarvis was saying into the communi-
cator: “As you know, commander, we
set our instruments at fifty feet maxi-
mum. This could be a city buried in
the jungle mud.”

It was in a way. It was an incredible
rubble of fvhat had been a city. The
scenes uncovered by the drillers were
shambles. Everywhere was shattered

138

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

steel and concrete and stone. And
bodies !

The bodies were at the street line
about fifty feet below the surface; a
whole pack of them turned up where
Grosvenor was directing a drilling crew.
Everything stopped as the great men of
the ship came over to examine the find.

"Rather badly smashed,” said Smith,
"but I think I can piece together a co-
herent picture.”

His skillful fingers arranged an as-
sembly of scattered bones into a rough
design. “Four-legged,” he said. He
turned a curious hazy light on the fragile
structure. “This one has been dead
about twenty-five years.”

He frowned, and picked up a bone,
and brought the hazy, whitish light
nearer to it. “Funny,” he said, “there’s
a resinous substance on this end of the
bone that’s impervious to ultra-light. It
reflects it. In all my experience, noth-
ing concrete, nothing except energy it-
self has ever stopped ultra-light. Kent,
what do you make of that?”

He handed the bone over ; and Gros-
venor stood, watching and waiting. He
felt fascinated, not by the mystery of
the bone, but because time and again,
since he had joined the ship’s company,
he had tried to picture the difference
between himself and these men.

Perhaps, he thought now, with in-
tense absorption, it was this ability of
theirs to concentrate utterly on some de-
tail of their special science.

Whereas he, Grosvenor, had already
rejected as irrelevant everything directly-
connected with the bones of these long-
dead creatures. These were the pitiful
victims, not the arrogant and deadly
destroyers.

The shattered relics that lay around
in such abundance might hold the secret
of the fundamental physical character
of a vanished race, but no clue could
there be in them of the unimaginably
merciless beings who had murdered
them.

The incredible beings who went

around deliberately jungle-izing habita-
ble planets.

In spite of his conviction of irrele-
vancy, Grosvenor had a brief, vivid,
mental picture of a civilization of four-
legged, two-armed, small-headed crea-
tures whose bodies could reflect every
wave of light. And then, Morton’s voice
was resonating quietly on the general
communicator :

“The . . . curious . . . reflecting fea-
ture of the bone . . . undoubtedly de-
serves study, but in more leisurely mo-
ments, not now when our whole will and
effort must be concentrated on our
search to locate the great forces that rule
this galaxy.”

It was vindication for his own opin-
ion. But Grosvenor said nothing. A
dark thought came that the vanished
race had not been able to reflect the
millions of tons of earth that buried them
and all their works. But he had no
sense of tragedy.

There was excitement in him, and an
intense pleasure in the scene of men
working with machines that were almost
human in their sensitivity, abnormal
and terrible in their irresistible power.

For the moment, he felt a part of tire
scene. Up to a point, it was a geology
show. As the geologists were Jarvis
and himself, and Jarvis was too busy to
bother him, for the first time Grosvenor
was on his own.

He flew 7 from drill crew to drill crew,
setting up his instruments, registering
for five hundred feet now, testing the
earth the drills removed.

His communicator buzzed with voices,
but only occasionally did he tune them
in. Once w 7 hen he heard Jarvis talking,
he listened as his superior said :

“Commander Morton, I’m willing to
commit myself. The jungle is a super-
imposed layer. It was brought here in
some sort of a cataclysm. The strata
below resembles that of an older, less
primitive planet. It could have been
Earth, with certain variations. I would
suggest that an astronomical study be

M 33 IN ANDROMEDA

139

made of nearby planets to determine if
they show any of the effects that must
have resulted when this planet was vio-
lently moved out of its original orbit, and
violently put into its present one.”

It was about half an hour later that
Zeller, the metallurgist, added his words
to the developing picture of a cosmic
catastrophe. Zeller’s voice blurred on
the communicator:

“This broken steel girder was rolled
less than seventy-five years ago. Its
electronic fatigue gap is only 23xl0 14 .”
“Thanks !” Morton’s voice was quiet.
"I think we can be pretty safe now in
assuming that the catastrophe was of
comparatively recent origin. Accord-
ingly, our work on this planet may be
considered finished. I’m going back, to
the ship now, and I’ll issue a general
recall from there.”

Grosvenor was thinking unsteadily:
“If I could solve this mystery! If I
could even get the first clue — The next
planet, of course, will be jungle, -too,
and I’ll concentrate on — ”

His thought drained like water run-
ning down a sinkhole. His brain
twirled. He whispered finally, shakily:
"The next planet will be jungle, too —
Good God, that’s it ! That’s the angle —
and I’m the only one on all the ship who
can handle it.”

With an effort, he caught that ego-
tistical twist of his mind. He thought
with wry grimness : It was the solution
of the problem that counted, not who
solved it. But the thought that had
come wouldn’t go away,

For beyond all doubt, the hour of hope
had struck for the lone, despised Nexi-
alist of the battleship Space Beagle.

Now that the moment was here, Gros-
venor felt a spasm of doubt. He stood
near Morton looking at the seated scien-
tists and there 'was no sense of satisfac-
tion in the victory that was going to be
his. He grew aware of Morton push-
ing forward, and raising his hand for
silence. The commander said :

“You have probably been wondering,
all of you, the purpose of our careening
around during the past two days. As
you know, we have visited three widely
separated star systems, and it is inter-
esting to note in that connection that no
interference has been offered to our
flight. Where we willed to go we went.

“What you do not know is that the
stars we visited were selected for in-
vestigation by Nexial mathematics un-
der a theory conceived and executed by
Elliott Grosvenor. Grosvenor, tell your
colleagues what you discovered.”

Astoundingly, it was a bad moment
for Grosvenor. He stood, shaking in-
wardly, in abrupt funk. He stood in the
grip of a hell of unexpected thoughts
that included the devastating realization
that you couldn’t just face men whose
attitude had denied your intelligence
and training. All the months that he
had been treated like a grown-up child
reached at his tongue and twisted at it.
striving to stop him from speaking.

The curious thought came finally that
there was only one way to begin a
speech; and that was to begin it. He
said:

“What I did was to obtain from Gun-
lie Lester his most developed photo-
graphic map of this galaxy. The im-
portant thing there was that he had
already marked the galactic longitude
and latitude planes, and the course we
liad taken.

“I must now call your attention briefly
to a branch of science which has not, I
know from experience” — Grosvenor

smiled bleakly — “commended itself very
highly to the science specialists of this
great ship with which we are to explore
the entire attainable universe. I refer
to the science of Nexialism, which has
its own mathematics, and is a method of
training designed to bridge the gap be-
tween facts that are related but sepa-
rated, for instance, by being contained in
the brainpans of two individuals. Nexi-
alism joins. It seeks to unify apparent
irrelations ; and its scope is so great that
the data of an entire galaxy is not too

140

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

complicated for it to cast into a recog-
nizable design.”

Grosvenor paused. Because he was
doing well. His voice was cool and
steady. His brain was working with
hair-trigger, split-second alertness. He
went on ; and his voice sounded tlirill-
ingly clear in his own ears :

“As I saw it, what we were primarily
interested in was this: Are all the plan-
ets of this galaxy jungle-ized, or aren’t
they? The mathematics involved — ”

He saw that the men were staring at
him. “Good heavens,” somebody said,
“if you can prove that — ”

Triumph was sweet, but it had a
strong drink quality, too. It put a
tremor into Grosvenor’s voice, as he
interrupted :

“It is proved, sir. The three-star sys-
tems we have just visited were selected
by Nexial mathematics. When examina-
tion verified that their habitable planets
were jungle worlds, it followed auto-
matically that every habitable globe in
this entire vast galaxy was a land of
jungle and beasts.”

He had them now ; there was no doubt
of that. Men stirred, and looked at
each other. Finally, the great Smith
said :

“But, Grosvenor, what about the in-
telligences that rule this galaxy? We’ve
opened the multiscreen several times ;
and the roar of myriad thoughts re-
mains. There are colossal minds out
there. They can’t possibly be living on
monster-inhabited jungle planets.”
Grosvenor said quietly: “Mr. Smith,
this whole problem is solved. The in-
telligence out there is a single entity.
We know what it' is. If you will have a
moment of patience — ”

“Gentlemen” — it was Morton, smiling
but grim — “what you are hearing is no
fantastic theory. These are the facts.
You are listening to the recount of the
most brilliant one-man show that has
ever been staged. Go on, Grosvenor.”

There was dead silence, then, except
for the pattern that Grosvenor’s voice

made against the quiet vastness of the
control room.

He told them the thoughts that had
led up to the finale, his attempts to fit
in what Gourlay had said about hyper-
space, the need for a gas environment,
and possibly for some nearby directive
to control the aim of the transmitter.

“I went down finally to the engine
room to check the graph of power dis-
charge of automatic C-9.” Grosvenor
smiled almost apologetically. “We have
so many automatic devices aboard this
ship, that some of them never receive
any attention except mechanical check-
ups. This is particularly true of our
automatic screens against the presence
of tenuous matter in space.

“Suffice to say that C-9 had been on
from the moment we heard the space
whisperings until we slapped on the
multiple screen, the complicated energy
structure of which, of course, assumed
C-9’s duties.”

Grosvenor went on: “With Com-

mander Morton’s permission I then had
the multiple screen briefly cut off, sent
out a G-ship and obtained a representa-
tive sample of the space around us. I
tested this myself, then for verification
took it to Mr. Kent who — ”

“What’s that ?” Kent was on his feet ;
there was a wild look in his eyes. “Was
that gas you brought me a sample of sur-
rounding space? Why, it’s a hydrogen
carbon compound, stabilized by a three-
tie juncture with the brain cell element
that — ”

He broke off: “Good heavens, man,
it’s life. It’s — ”

“But why does it jungle-ize planets ?”
a man cried.

Grosvenor silenced the gathering
clamor by raising his hand. “I can an-
swer that, too. The problem actually
was, what did it feed on? I tried vari-
ous methods of stimulation and — ”

The Anabis lay in an immense, suf-
fused, formless form, spread through all
the space of the second galaxy. It

M 33 IN ANDROMEDA

141

writhed a little, feebly, in a billion por-
tions of its body, shrinking with auto-
matic adjustment away from the de-
stroying fury of two billion blazing suns,
but pressing down tight against the
myriad planets, sucking with a feverish,
insatiable hunger around the quadril-
lion tingling points where were dying
.the creatures that gave it life.

It wasn’t enough. Through all the
countless, tenuous cells of its titanic
structure, that dread knowledge of an
imminent starvation seeped to the far-
thest reaches of its weakened body-
gtgantic.

Not enough food, the dreary message
pulsed on and on through its imponder-
able elements, not enough, not enough —
its mass was too big. It had made a
fatal mistake in growing with such vast
abandon during the early days.

In those years the future had seemed
limitless, the Galactic space where its
form could wax ever huger had seemed
of endless extent; and it had expanded
with all the vaunting, joyous egoism of
a lowborn grown conscious of stupen-
dous destiny.

It was lowborn. In the dim begin-
ning was only gas oozing from a mist-
covered swamp. Odorless, tasteless, col-
orless gas, yet somehow, someway, a
dynamic combination was struck ; and
there was life.

At first it was nothing but a puff of
invisible mist ardently darting hither
and thither over the muggy, muddy
waters that had spawned it, darting,
twisting, diving, pursuing, incessantly
and with a gathering alertness, a gather-
ing need, striving to be present while
something — anything — -was being killed.

For the death of others was its life.

What a terrible joy it was to swoop
over two insects buzzing in a furious
death struggle, envelope them, and wait,
trembling in every gassy atom, for the
life force of the defeated to spray with
tingling effect against its own insub-
stantial elements.

There was a timeless period then

when its life was only that aimless search
for food ; and its world was a narrow
swamp, a gray, nubiferous environ-
ment where it lived its contented, active,
idyllic, almost mindless existence.

But even in that world of suffused
sunlight it grew bigger imperceptibly.
It needed more food, more than any
haphazard search for dying insects could
bring it.

And so it developed cunnings, spe-
cial little knowledges that fitted the
dank swamp. It learned which were
the insects that preyed and which the
prey. It learned the hunting hours of
every species, and where the tiny non-
flying monsters lay in wait — the flying
ones were harder to keep track of. It
learned to use its eviscerated shape like
a breeze to sweep unsuspecting victims
to their fate.

Its food supply became adequate, then
more than adequate. It grew and once
more it hungered.

By purest necessity it became aware
of a world beyond the swamp. And,
oh, what a day it was when it ventured
forth, and came upon two gigantic
armored beasts at the bloody climax of a
death struggle. The sustained thrill of
the defeated monster’s life force stream-
ing through its vitals, the stupendous
quantity of force provided ecstasy
greater than that experienced during all
its previous life put together.

In one brief hour, while the victor
devoured the writhing vanquished, the
Anabis grew by ten thousand times ten
thousand.

During the single day and night pe-
riod that followed, the steaming jungle
world was enveloped. The Anabis over-
flowed every ocean, every continent, and
spread up into the brighter reaches of
the atmosphere, where the sun shone on
it directly for the first time.

Explosive result! Later, in the days
of its intelligence, it learned that sun-
light provided a necessary reaction on
its elements, provided mass and weight.

But in that first minute there was

142

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

only the effect, the dynamic expansion.
On the second day it reached the first,
adjoining planet. It reached the limits
of the galaxy in a measurable time,
stretched out instinctively for the shin-
ing stuff of other star systems and met
defeat in distances that seemed to yield
nothing to its groping, tenuous matter.

The days of its power seemed but a
moment. Jungle worlds, with their pro-
lific life-and-death cycles chilled; the
supply of life force diminished notably.
It hungered and once more grew in
cunning.

It discovered that by concentrating its
elements it could make holes in space,
go through, and come out at a distant
point. It learned to transport matter in
this fashion. It began to jungle-ize plan-
ets long before it discovered that some
of them were inhabited by curious, intel-
ligent things.

It believed — and there was no one to
dispute — that primeval worlds provided
the most life force. It transported great
slices of other jungle worlds through
hyperspace. It knocked cold planets
nearer their suns.

And it wasn’t enough.

The coming of the ship brought hope.
It would follow the ship to wherever it
had come from ; and, after that, no more
wild, mindless, greedy growth —

Pain! The ship after darting aim-
lessly about, landed on a barren planet,
and was sending forth incredible agony.

Darkness made no difference. The
Space Beagle crouched on a vast plain
of jagged metal, every porthole shed-
ding light, great searchlights pouring
down their flood of illumination on the
row on row of engines that were tearing
enormous holes into the hard, all-iron
world.

There was no attempt to make steel,
simply the creating of unstable iron tor-
pedoes that were launched into space at
the rate of one a second. That was the
beginning.

By midnight the manufacturing rna-

THE

chine itself began to be manufactured;
and each one in turn created those slim,
dark torpedoes that soared into the sur-
rounding night scattering their sub-
stance a quarter of a light year to every
side. Thirty thousand years those tor-
pedoes would shed their destroying
atoms ; and they were designed to re-
main within the gravitational field of
their galaxy, but never to fall on a planet
or into a sun.

As the slow, red-dawn crept toward
fruition, Engineer Pennons reported
hoarsely to Morton :

‘‘We’re now turning out nine thou-
sand a second ; and I think we can safely
leave the machines to finish the job.
I’ve put a partial screen around the
planet to prevent interference. Three
more iron worlds properly located; and
I think our bulky friend will begin to
have a hollow feeling in his vital parts.
But what comes after that?”

Morton smiled grimly : “N. G. C.
fifty thousand three hundred forty-
seven.”

Pennons whistled. “Nine hundred
million light years! Do you think it
will follow?”

“It’s got to. The alternative is to be
destroyed by our torpedoes, or a blind
stab at another galaxy of its own choos-
ing. But we’ll see — ”

Through telescopes they watched the
faint fuzz of gas stream out behind them
and follow.

Morton turned finally from the eye-
piece. “We’ll go on for about a year,”
he said, “then go invisible and turn
aside.”

As he was going out of the door a
few minutes later, he came upon Zeller
and Grosvenor. The metallurgist was
saying :

“Er, Grosvenor, I have a little prob-
lem in metal chemistry that I think needs
tying up with an energy function. Do
you think Nexialism could — ”

Grosvenor said: “Why, I think so,
Mr. Zeller. What—”

Morton passed on, smiling.

END.

141

When Is When?

It's pretty herd for a men to get into real trouble
with a time machine on hand to yank him out af
it. But Anachron Inc. was missing several groups
of agents — agents that vanished into newhen!

Illustrated by Kramer

It was a fine balmy morning in May,
when spring is in the air and the prom-
ise of early summer. It was the kind
of day when a fellow felt like banging
his desk shut and going fishing. It
was the kind of day — well, it was a
swell day. And Barry felt swell, too.
He could hardly keep from bursting into
joyous whistling despite the company’s
ironclad rule, as he strode happy and
carefree down one of the Anachron
Building’s endless corridors. For only
a moment ago the ponderous doors of
the room where the solemn Discipline
Court sat had opened to let him out —
not only acquitted, but completely ex-
onerated of having broken Rule
G-45607. It was great!

Not that it had been easy. The mem-
bers of the board had been tough at first
and bawled him out more than once- for
what they termed quibbling and hair-
splitting. It did him no good to insist
that the job of being Emperor of Rome
was wished on him and that strictly
speaking he had never “accepted” the
post at all. What got him off — techni-
cally, that is — was a bit of slippery
sophistry concerning the meaning of

the word “public” as used in the origi-
nal rule. One standard definition of
the word meant pertaining to the com-
munal good, or its improvement. Barry
contended that since intertemporal com-
merce benefited all concerned, any em-
ployee was, therefore, a holder of public
office in the era where he operated,
from which it followed that all of them
were constantly violating the rule. On
the other hand if “public office” was to
be taken in the narrower sense of being
a post in national government, Barry
had provided himself with an out on
that. His first official act on realizing
he had been made emperor was also
to assume the role of Pontifex Maxi-
mus, whereupon he promptly deified
himself. Then, being a living god with
appropriate powers, he abolished the
empire and set up a theocracy with him-
self as head, and made it all retroactive.

“So, gentlemen,” declared Barry
stoutly, “I was never emperor at all.
I took the title of Jupiter Atlanticus,
and everybody knows there is nothing
political about that.”

The judges frowned, and went into a
huddle. But Barry didn’t worry. He

144

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

was sitting pretty and he knew it. It
was just like the old army days. Com-
pany rules, like the army regulations,
covered every conceivable thing in the
minutest detail. If a fellow learned
them all and took care never to break
a one — well, he never got in trouble,
but likewise he never got far. Smash
a rule and one of two things invariably
happens. You either get kicked out,
or somebody pins a medal on you. It
all depends on the outcome. So Barry
smiled and waited. He had done all
the undoable things they had told him
to do — broken up Cassidy's rackets, sent
Cassidy home in disgrace, and, best of
all, had made scads of money for the
company. Now he had given them the
formula for the whitewash. Let them
mix it up and spread it on.

Thus it was that a few minutes later
he was on his way to his boss’ office,
dazzling with synthetic purity. He
wanted to be the first to tell Kilmer the
good news, for if Kilmer was having his
usual run of headaches he would be
needing good news by this time of day.
Probably Kilmer had had something to
do with his prompt acquittal, ..but Barry
did not intend to be overgrateful on that
score, for Kilmer was prone enough to
hand out impossible jobs already. So
with that in mind he came to the sales
manager's door.

When he barged into the latter’s office
he found things quite in accord with the
Kilmer tradition. A red-faced and sput-
tering fieldman was on the carpet, trying
vainly to explain away a failure. Kilmer
was taking it characteristically, pacing
the floor like a caged thing, tearing at
his hair and swearing steadily in a
lugubrious monotone. But the fieldman
was standing his ground.

“All right, Mr. Kilmer,” he said dog-
gedly. “believe it or not, but I’m telling
it to you straight. If you don’t think so,
hop into one of your gilded executive
shuttles and take a run down for a look-
see yourself. Maybe those dopes in
Shuttle Service sent me to the wrong
date, though they swear they didn’t.

And then again, maybe the histories are
wrong — ”

“Don’t be a jackass, Dilworth,”
snapped Kilmer. “How can the his-
tories be wrong? Certainly not about
something that happened in my own life-
time. Why, I was in Siberia at the time,
with the American Expeditionary Force,
and I know. Why — ”

“O. K„ O. K.” said Dilworth, sul-
lenly. “So you were there. So was I.
In Moscow. Not two hours ago. Maybe
there was such a person as Lenin and
the Bolsheviks you talk about back in
1918. But when I got there they hadn’t
got the news. The church bells were all
ringing and Cossacks were clearing the
streets of the rabble. There were pro-
cessions of priests. It was about the
Czarevitch’s birthday, or something — ”

“You are driving me crazy,” yelled
Kilmer, biting his cigar in two. “The
Czar and the Czarevitch and all the
other Czarewhatnots were dead when
you got there. The priesthood was abol-
ished, and there weren’t any more Cos-
sacks. Oil, get out, before I lose my
temper.”

“Yes, sir,” said the fieldman grumpily, '
and turned to go. Barry saw that he
was dressed the part — in dirty gray
blouse over baggy trousers tucked into
Russian boots — and appropriately seedy
looking as befitted a Comrade of the
Proletariat.

“I,” Kilmer announced mournfully,
“am going nuts. Your Roman affair
was headache enough, but it can’t touch
this business of disappearances and mix-
ups.”

“What disappearances and mix-ups?”
asked Barry, innocently. “I haven’t
been here, you know. I’ve been busy
needling the spirit of progress into the
decadent Roman Empire.”

“So you have,” said Kilmer absently.
He glared for a moment at his piled-up
desk, and then dug around until he
found a basket tagged with a huge ques-
tion mark. He pulled out some memo-
randa.

WHEN IS WHEN?

14S

“You are a fellow with dizzy ideas,’'
Kilmer began, “but they do seem to
work. Maybe you can help me. A
couple of months ago the Policy Board
made an important reversal of policy.
You may remember that heretofore.
Ethics kept us from' doing intertemporal
commerce with warring nations when-
ever they thought the cause of one or
the other was unjust and their winning
might work out badly. They loosened
that rule a bit. They said we might sell
to them provided we sold to both sides
at the same time. That is, it was O. K.
to let Napoleon have machine guns so
long as we also gave Wellington a crack
at them. See?”

Barry nodded.

“Our first two approved projects were
the French and Indian Wars in this
country, back in colonial days, and the
row between the English and the Span-
iards around the time of the Armada.
So we fitted out four expeditions. One
was to have gone to Philadelphia and
contacted Ben Franklin in order to outfit
the Braddock army. One went to Que-
bec to deal with General Montcalm.
Then we sent one to Elizabethan Eng-
land to dicker with Queen Bess and
Francis Drake. The fourth we sent to
Spain to sell ’em ships and guns for the
Armada. Well, two of them got there.
The other two vanished somewhere
along the line. They just aren’t any
more.”

“Overshot the mark, perhaps,” sug-
gested Barry. He had often wondered
where a wild time shuttle might end up
if something went wrong with the
brakes. “Maybe they have been eaten
by dinosaurs.”

Kilmer shook his head.

“Impossible with the new shuttle sys-
tem. It used to be that now and then
somebody would abscond and skip out
to the past with the dough and one of
our shuttles, and there was a case or so
of highjacking. We changed the shuttle
operating mechanism to forestall that.
Nowadays the operator in the car has
nothing to do with its control. The

starter punches the exact date and hour
required, together with the geographical
co-ordinates. Then he computes the
amount of power needed to push the car
to that definite point. When the car
reaches its destination and is ready to
return, the operator signals for the back
pull. Then the starter gives him more
energy, but in reverse. A shuttle can’t
get lost.”

“That is funny,” agreed Barry. “It
couldn’t be because they ran smack into
the middle of a battle or a massacre. It
would only take a second to snap back
out of it. And even if one had been
caught it would hardly account for two
being lost simultaneously in altogether
different spots and eras.”

“Two!” exclaimed Kilmer. “We have
lost more than two. There was one sent
to Greece in ’23 of this century, and an-
other to Bavaria around 1700. They
haven’t been heard of again, either, nor
the one we sent to dicker with Sun Yat
Sen in China when he pulled off his
revolution. There hasn’t been but one
come back — that fellow who just left
here. We sent him to swap machinery
to start the Soviet Five-year Plan for
the Imperial crown jewels and other loot
of the Russian upset. He got back all
right, but he says there never was a Rus-
sian revolution. The thing has me down.
I’m commencing to think the Anachron
idea is not so hot after all.”

“Hm-m-m,” murmured Barry, draw-
ing a pad and pencil to him. “Let us
have those dates again. There may be
a connection. Satistical analysis does
wonders sometime.”

“Not in this case,” growled Kilmer,
but he gave the information. Barry
tabulated the data. When he finished, it
looked like this :

Destination :

Spain; 1582
England; 1582
Bavaria; 1700
China; 1912
Russia; 1918
Greece; 1923
Pennsylvania Colony ; 1752
New France; 1752

Result :

Disappearance.
Normal results.
Disappearance.
Disappearance.
Confused report.
Disappearance.
Disappearance.
Normal results.

146

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“Not much correlation there,” ob-
served Barry, frowning at the figures.
“How far apart were the first two?”
“On the same day,” said Kilmer,
“both here and there. They were to
have reached down under on October
12th. Here are the exact dates of all
the rest. The ones to colonial America
were to arrive at the same time also —
September 5th. You can’t hang it on
the destination, either. We sent relief
expeditions later. Some came back all
right, but with a negative report.”

“It’s damn queer, I’ll admit,” agreed
Barry. “Suppose I hang onto these for
a day or so? I might be able to dope
something out.”

“Sure,” said the gloomy Kilmer. “By
the way, it was your old sidekick Mave-
rick who was in charge of the Spanish
show. He is nobody’s fool.”

“No,” said Barry, thoughtfully, “and
that makes it all the more interesting.
I may take a run down to Spain of the
Sixteenth Century and look around for
him.”

“I wouldn’t advise it,” said Kilmer
glumly. “You might fall into the same
time hole. All of our relief expeditions
didn’t come back. Several vanished in
the same manner as the originals."

“That makes it tougher,” rerriarked
Barry, and rose to take his leave.

WHEN IS WHEN?

147

He spent the remainder of the after-
noon in research. The mathematicians
tried all sorts of tricks with his dates,
but could find no common denominator.
Up in Philosophy the sages couldn’t be
bothered. It was out of their sphere.
The shuttle people almost wept at hear-
ing Barry’s questions. It wasn’t their
fault, they insisted, if adventurous time
salesmen got themselves killed by medie-
val bandits or wild Indians. What were
a few isolated disappearances against
thousands of successfully accomplished
round trips?

It was in History that Barry got his
first clue, but it by no means clarified the
mystery. At the same time it did give
him a hunch, and he followed through.
Then he spent a few hours reviewing the
bulky set of regulations under which he
had to work. After that, he made an-
other call on Kilmer.

“Say, boss,” he began, “[ have an
idea who did this to us. He has been
dead a good many hundred years now.
but in his day there weren't any bigger
shots. If I can get around Rule A-800
and — ”

Kilmer groaned.

“Those damned rules.” he muttered
miserably. “Don’t you go busting any
more rules. We've got away with mur-
der twice. The next time it’ll cost us
botli our jobs. Besides, A-800 is the
worst of all — that’s the one about not
bucking kings and emperors and other
potentates, isn’t it?”

“Yeh. Only I won’t try to do it
openly. I can’t get at the guy direct
because he maintains a private army.
I can’t bribe him, either. But if I can
get him to retract his edict — ”

“Now you’ve gone nutty,” pronounced
Kilmer. “If there’s one thing that Ana-
chron is sure of, it is that nothing that
is changed in the past can affect us in
our own time line. It can only affect the
offshoot lines generated by the change.
The philosophers swear by that; it is
the foundation of our business. Our
charter hangs on it.”

“I know,” said Barry. “But have the
AST— 10X

philosophers told us everything? We
deal with the branch time lines — I just
came in off of one of them. Now let’s
suppose our missing friends are hung up
in a blind alley along our time line and
I get a dead big shot to undo something
that he did long ago to ball them up.
What it would amount to would be that
I create a subsidiary time line along
which we can affect the rescue. Do I
make myself clear?"

“As clear as Mississippi floodw'ater.”
said the weary Kilmer. “Don’t bother
me with details or philosophy. If
you’ve got a hunch, play it. Now what
do you want?"

Barry told him.

“A ten million trade-dollar line of
credit — on which I hope to show a profit
— and no questions asked.”

Kilmer drew a pad to him and began
to scribble. He did it with the same
show of joy that he might have if he
had been making out his own death
warrant.

“I might as well be washed up as the
way I am,” he sighed, and handed the
ticket across to Barry.

“Thanks, boss. I’ll be seeing you.”

Columbus cleared Cadiz in the sum-
mer of 1492 with three dinky little tubs.
Less than ninety years later — Spanish
time — El Almirante Teodoro Barrios del
San Francisco and Duque del California
del Norte — so Ted Barry styled him-
self — let go the hook of his magnificent
flagship the San Ysidro. He strutted
his tiny quarterdeck atop the lofty poop
and surveyed the crowds on the mole
through a Mark VIII Anachron long
glass. He could see the fisherfolk gap-
ing, and the astounded stares of scarred
seadogs who had doubtless also sailed
the Spanish Main. The arrival of the
three ships had created quite a stir.

The afternoon wore drowsily on while
fisher craft circled the little fleet curi-
ously. Never had been seen such stately
vessels, or ones of such fine lines and
rig. But the admiral and his shipping
master, Parker, held their peace, wait-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

148

ing for what they knew must inevitably
come. And then, late in the afternoon,
but still with remarkable alacrity for
Spaniards, they saw the gaudy boat put
out from shore. It flaunted the red and
gold banner of Castile Aragon.

“I am Don Pablo de Xerife,” said the
boarding officer, as he mounted to the
poop, “harbormaster for my lord the
Duke of Medina-Sidonia. He wishes
to know whence came these vessels and
what the meaning of the strange stand-
ard they fly.”

“That’s a break,” replied Admiral
Barrios. “I was hoping to meet that
bird.”

“Um cosa rota f” echoed the bewil-
dered harbormaster. "Que esf What
broke? What bird?”

"Oh, skip it,” said Barry, “I forgot I
was not still in India del Poniente. The
idiom there is passing strange to unac-
customed ears. Tell your master that
the flag is that of the great Indian na-
tion Anachronia that lieth to the north-
westward of the king’s domain of Cali-
fornia. I have come to tell him of the
marvels of that rich land and of the cun-
ning skill of the wild men who inhabit
it. It was they who contrived the mira-
cle guns you see here, and the wondrous
sailing gear. I would that he would take
me to His Highness so that I may lay
these treasures at his feet.”

Don Pablo bowed low, but his eyes
were bugging. He had never seen a
modern streamlined sailing ship before
with tubular steel masts and running
gear that was rove through neat gal-
vanized iron blocks. Nor so much clear
deck space despite the many guns along
the bulwarks. They were different guns,
too, from the clumsy brass carronades of
the galleons. These were bright and
shiny and of the color of good Toledo
steel.

“I understand that our lordship,”
Barry went on, “is contemplating the
destruction of perfidious England. If
not, he had better have had, for only this
year the pirate Drake stuck his nose
into my harbor of San Francisco. Soon

he will be back with more ships and men
to take Anachronia from the infidel sav-
ages before ere we can. Can you per-
suade his lordship to come aboard to-
morrow so that I can show what manner
of ships we build in Poniente?”

“Surely, yes,” said Senor Xerife.

He went away after an hour, fortified
by several shrewdly chosen drinks, and
carrying a small gold nugget which the
admiral assured him were common
enough in the northern part of Cali-
fornia to be used as paving stones. In
addition he carried a Colt revolver and
a single box of ammunition. Barry
wanted to make very certain of his first
impression on the bloodthirsty duke.
For Medina-Sidonia was the most pow-
erful of all the courtiers in the train of
Philip the Second of Spain. And Philip
himself was the fair-haired boy with a
certain —

But that could wait, Barry declared,
and he went into consultation with
Parker as to the details of the morrow.
That night they further amazed the
local inhabitants of the port by putting
on a searchlight display, using the acety-
lene model that had worked well in old
France. It had its effect, for the duke
and retinue climbed aboard almost with
the sun.

The getting underway went smoothly.
Sidonia watched the fishing of the an-
chor with a practiced seaman’s eye and
marveled at the smoothness of the Ana-
chron capstan. He marveled more as
the sails went up without visible effort
and the ship stood out to sea.

“Where can I find a good target ?”
asked Barry. “I want to demonstrate
the guns.”

“Along the Moorish shore there are
many — far too many,” said Sidonia,
with a black scowl. “The accursed non-
believers are as numerous as fleas, and
as fleet. The foul pirates show their
heels at the first close approach. It
would be better to go to the west, where
we may come upon an Englishman in a
day or so.”

“I can’t spare the time,” was Barry’s

WHEN IS WHEN?

149

mystifying reply. “I’ll take the first
thing handy. What do you make of that
low, rakish thing there to the south —
the one with the leg o’ mutton sail and
rigged out with oars like a centipede?’’

“ Tis one of the accursed Saracens,”
said Sidonia, “but you waste time. He’ll
wait like a fox until you are right on
him, and then he’ll run as though the
Evil One were on his tail — which he is.
He will be too wily to let you get within
gun shot.”

“Yeah?” said Barry, and winked at
Parker. Then he held up four fingers
signifying that the sights were to be set
for four thousand yards. Whereupon
the helmsman put the rudder over and
they began to close upon the corsair.
Silently the Anachron-trained gun crews
took their posts. Medina-Sidonia gaped
again at seeing breechblocks open and
the shot and powder fed in from the
rear. Off the bow the corsair still
dawdled in the distance, a good three
miles away, confident that he could out-
run the heavier ship if things came to
that pass.

Barry lowered his glasses.

“Commence firing,” he ordered.

A salvo rippled out. The row of guns
reared back on their lashings. And

then, before the first shots had even
landed, the crews had yanked the breech-
plugs open and were in the act of load-
ing again.

“Valgaine,” gasped the Duke of Me-
dina-Sidonia, crossing himself by in-
stinct. At the incredible distance of
two miles there had arisen a geyser of
white water, and in it flew the frag-
ments of the blasted galley. A second
later there was only a thin pall of set-
tling mist, a broken prow sticking up
out of the water, and a couple of score
of black dots on the water where the
surviving Moors still swam.

“There is another galley off there to
port,” said Parker, pointing.

Barry was not keen to go in for more
wholesale murder just to make a sale,
but he remembered that Maverick’s life
and many others depended on the suc-
cess of his mission. He also remem-
bered that the Moors were unscrupulous
pirates in their own right. So he nodded
his head and let Parker bring the ship
around. By night they had cleaned up
five of the galleys — most of them on the

150

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

first salvo. It was a deeply impressed
duke that disembarked that night.

Two days later Barry found himself
in the same ducal coach with Sidonia,
jolting along the dusty roads of Spain
toward Madrid. Armed postilions and
outriders guarded them from ambuscade.
All the long way the duke chattered
about the great day when he would build
an armada and conquer England. He
had thought it would take eight or ten
years to assemble such a fleet, but here
was an adventurer from the New World
assuring him it would take much less.
That is, if only the king would finance
the expedition.

Philip was not at Madrid, but be-
yond, supervising the building of his
great new palace, the Escorial. It was
there that Barry found him. The king,
failing to recognize the alleged duchy of
which Teodoro Barrios claimed to be
overlord, glanced at him with scant re-
spect. But that attitude altered when
Medina-Sidonia spoke of the wonderful
performance of the San Ysidro.

“Sire,” he urged, “with fourscore
such ships we can conquer the earth —
the Low Countries and England, who
give us much trouble, and Portugal and
Mauretania as well. Above' all, we
must have this land of Anachron of
which Don Teodor speaks.”

“What of Anachron?” asked the king,
leveling his fierce gaze on Barry. His
eyes were those of a ruthless fanatic,
blinded to all consequences of his ter-
rible acts by the religious zeal that drove
him. A hawknosed chief inquisitor
looked on with glittering eyes.

“Far to the northwest of Hispania
Nueva, on the shores of the Mar Pa-
cifico, lies the land of Oregon, peopled
by the tribe of Anachron.” Barry had
to think furiously, for it would be hard
to explain to this king why Juan
Cabrillo, who had recently discovered
southern California had not gone on to
complete the conquest. “It is a land of
fog and darkness, and hard to come by
sea and impossible by land on account

of the mighty mountains. ’Twas but by
chance that my ship came upon their
chief port.* These are not a copperish
people as those of Mexico and the An-
tilles, but whitish, even as we.”

“But infidels?” barked the inquisitor.
“Aye, a most ungodly people. Or
rather, a people of many gods. There
are many of them, tens upon tens of
thousands, clever at handwork but
greedy and grasping. They have a
few good ships, but not many, since they
are too fond of luxury to fight. We
have only to hire them to build us a suffi-
cient fleet to liquidate the English, and
then we will be able to go for them.
Sire, they will be a pushover.”

Barry bit his lip in mortification for
having let himself slip into the Ana-
chronistic dialect, but it didn’t matter.
In translating his thought into Middle
Castilian, he had perforce used the ex-
pression “roundheels” which seemed to
convey a similar ’ meaning at Philip’s
Court, for the king grinned briefly at the
metaphor. Then he frowned.

“How much will such a fleet cost ?”
“A million pistoles, sire,” said Barry
calmly.

“Phew!” It came like the roar of
freight locomotive opening its bottom
blow. Nearby courtiers and syncho-
phants paled and trembled. A few
hastily made the sign of the cross. But
the chief inquisitor was fondling the
nugget which Medina-Sidonia had
brought with him to the court. If these
cluttered the landscape —

“Think of the million souls to save,
sire,” suggested he. “ Perhaps his holi-
ness — ”

“Ah,” breathed the king, “perhaps so.
We have spent so much already in Bra-
bant and Holland that only a little more
sent after the bad may retrieve it all.
Yet, why do these uncouth savages de-
mand money? Is not their country
bursting with gold?”

“They do not have use for gold,” as-
sured Barry, “but luxuries. Let your
gold remain at home. Instead, buy with
it paintings, wines, slabs of cork, casks

WHEN IS WHEN?

1S1

of olive oil, finely wrought silver vessels
and the other art products of Europe.
These I will take back with me to give
in exchange for the armada. In three
years I will return with what I have
bought. Then the world will be yours.”

There was a long deep silence. At
length the king broke it.

*‘I must have a writing.” he said,
“duly sealed and sworn.”

“You shall have it, sire,” said Barry.

Monks were sent scurrying to bring
quills and parchment and inkwells. Then
followed a period of scratchings as the
promissory note was made out. It was
a lengthy and impressive document,
bristling with “whereases” and ending
with “under our hands and seals.” The
date of its execution was filled in— that
day, October 12, A. D., 1579. All that
remained was the date of maturity.

“You’d better make it three years,”
said Barry casually. “It will take a year
to make the voyage back by way of the
Tierra del Fuego, another year to build
and outfit the ships, and a final year
here. Yes, three years to the day will
do very nicely.”

The date was filled in. Barry signed,
and the cardinal came to sign as wit-
ness. To clinch the matter beyond any
possible doubt, there followed a brief
ceremony. The direst curses were in-
voked on either party should he deviate
by the slightest iota from the text. It
looked bad for Barry, for the palace
treasurer was already standing by to
deliver the order for the pistoles. Within
a few minutes the king would have com-
plied wdth his half of the contract ex-
cept for the final collection of the funds
advanced. Barry would have received
his grubstake and the viceroyship of the
new dominion. For his part, he must
yet deliver the fleet as promised, return
the advance, and then make good his
conquest of Anachronia.

When it was all over, Barry pocketed
his copy of the treaty and followed the
royal party to the dining hall. He no-
ticed that the king, the cardinal, and the
chief inquisitor, not to mention the Duke

of Medina-Sidonia, all looked highly
pleased. He might have guessed that
they were about to make a tidy profit on
the million, since they themselves owned
most of the commodities mentioned in
Barry’s request. Barry did not mind
that. The thing was he had managed
the loan and given his note. What mat-
tered now was when and where they
would discount that note. Surely, since
the Jews had been expelled from Spain,
there were few if any bankers able to
take up so vast a sum. Yet on the -whole
Barry was as happy over the transaction
as the mercenary bigwigs of the court.
His first step had been taken. The next
day in the lap of the gods. But history
was so far on his side. Would history
make a monkey of him, or would he
make a monkey of history?

“Swallowed it hook, line and sinker,”
he told Parker, when he got back to
Cadiz. “Now home, James.”

The three ships bulged with priceless
ecclesiastical paintings, a ton or more of
the choicest handiwork of Benvenuto
Cellini, and other items worth together
much more than the million pistoles
owed for them. Barry could still buy
the armada and deliver it and show a
profit at the same time. Whether or not
he completed the bargain would depend
upon the results of his second trip. He
meant to make that shortly. In the
meantime, the ships weighed their an-
chors and put out to sea.

It was on one of the Azores that he
had his secret base. The San Ysidro
led the way into the quiet harbor. Barry
did not wait for her to discharge her
cargo, but ran at once to the station
shuttle platform. Then he put through
a call to Kilmer.

“Send me a special shuttle right
away,” he asked. “I’m coming up.”

“Did you find Maverick?”

“Not yet. I’m in 1579. He’s some-
where else. Step on it, won’t you ?”

When he got topside he did not tell
Kilmer more than the bare facts of what
he had done. Why he had done it was

152

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

still his own secret. If he succeeded, he
could boast in due time; if not, the less
said now the better. So he told his tale
simply. His reward was a wan smile.
Kilmer must have someone else in his
hair again, Barry concluded, since he
looked so sour.

“Glad you salvaged something out of
the Spanish thing,” said the boss, but
with little enthusiasm. “Bugs Chilton
played hell in England. He sold Queen
Liz, all right. A hundred ships of the
line. And now look !”

It was a cancellation order. The Eng-
lish, adhering to a policy that must have
been initiated by the first Britons, had
decided to wait for the actual coming of
the armada before preparing. They
would take only one ship of the lot for
trial and proof.

“Ninety-nine ships, built and ready
for delivery,” moaned Kilmer, “and
charged to me. And now I get a can-
cellation.”

“Cheer up, boss,” grinned Barry.
“I’ll take ’em. I need eighty for Philip,
and it’s a cinch that I can sell the other
nineteen to Queen Bess when she finds
out he has the eighty. I’ve already fig-
ured my price — a half a million dou-
bloons.”

Then Barry took a week off and spent
it in the country loafing. He had time
to burn. After which he returned to
New York and reported in.

“I think I’ll take that fleet on down
and deliver it to Philip,” he explained-.
“Tell the shuttle people to make the date
midsummer of 1582. That is ahead of
the time I am due to show' up, but I may
need a little leeway for more negotia-
tions.”

Kilmer did not argue with him, but
made the arrangements. What Barry
was up to he could not guess, especially
since he had insisted on having full bat-
tle crews for the ships, but all his money
was down on him and he couldn’t back
out now.

“Oh, by the way,” said Barry on part-
ing, “if Maverick and the other lads
show up while I’m away and wonder

what happened to them, just tell them
to sit tight and I’ll explain when I get
back. S’long.”

Then Barry W'as gone. Kilmer’s jaw
dropped as he gazed at the empty chair.
Had,, Barry been pulling his leg all the
while? For at the outset he had pro-
posed to rescue the missing expeditions
from wherever it was they were lost, yet
he had not gone near any of the dates
of their disappearance.

A week rolled by. There had been
no further report from Barry, though
the starter said that he and his fleet had
gotten away from the Azores on time.
Then another week went by, and a third.
A month followed, and then almost an-
other when things began to break. When
they did, they broke with a vengeance.

All four telephones on Kilmer’s desk
began ringing at once. He took them
two at a time and listened incredulously
to the excited words of the shuttle
starters. The missing expeditions were
reporting in from all directions, wanting
to know what bad happened and what
they should do next. There was the
fellow in Bavaria, the one in China, the
one with Benjamin Franklin, and the
two expeditions that had gone looking
for them. There was also the salesman
sent to modern Greece. And last of all,
Maverick.

“Come home and report,” was all that
Kilmer knew what to say.

Within a few hours they lined up be-
fore his desk, rather sheepish and
tongue-tied. Each had the same tale to
tell.

“We simply floated around in a gray-
black sort of pea-soup fog,” was the
way Maverick put it. “We were like
disembodied spirits, without sensation
or bodies. The shuttles weren’t there —
our hands and feet were there — the con-
trols weren’t there. It seemed to last
for ages. Then, bang, everything cleared
up. We reported in at our destinations
and were immediately recalled. What
happened to us ?”

"Search me,” said Kilmer helplessly.

WHEN IS WHEN?

153

“Barry knows, but Barry is off in the
Middle Ages, selling the armada to King
Philip of Spain.”

“Why, the rat !” exclaimed Maverick.
“That was my assignment !”

“You didn’t sell it, did you?” asked
Kilmer.

Then the door was opened and Barry
walked in, grinning like the wrapping of
a catful of canaries.

“Hiya, fellows,” he hailed them.
“How did you like nonexistence?”

“Huh?” It was a chorus.

“That is what I said. You birds went
where there wasn’t any time. You
went to nonexistent dates. You fell
into time holes. There are a lot of
’em.”

“Quit kidding.” someone said, “there
isn’t any such thing. Time is continu-
ous. How could there be holes in it ?
And if so, how did you pull us out?”

“By going back before the holes were
dug and stopping the digger from dig-
ging.”

Barry sat down and turned to Kilmer.

“Everything’s jake, boss. I delivered
my end to Philip, and then went on to
London and sold Liz. She paid through
the nose like a good girl and I got my
pistoles back. And then some. It wor-
ried her plenty when I told her what
Philip had. But it was dickering with
him that took all the time.”

“I showed up way ahead of time,”
Barry went on to explain. “Philip was
tickled pink and was for taking posses-
sion of the fleet then and there. But I
reminded him that the contract didn’t
call for delivery until October, and that
there was the matter of the million
pistoles to consider. I didn't have ’em.
Not yet. He offered to waive the pis-
toles, which would have been that much
velvet, but I still wouldn’t let him have
the fleet. Then he said he would take
it. I said O. K., try. So that fell
through. Then he wanted to know what
I was trying to pull. And I cracks back
with what was he trying to pull. He

154

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

didn’t understand it, so I told him.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Barry,” cried
out Kilmer, “quit beating arOund the
bush and teasing us. Who was trying to
put something over whom, and why?”

“Well, sir, I have a great respect for
a triple-barreled curse, especially when
it is laid on by a cardinal and a chief
inquisitor. So had Philip. I was sup-
posed to hand over the fleet on October
12, 1582, and he was required- to accept
it. Now, as it stood, we couldn’t do
that, so I suggested that he fix things
up so that there would be a date like
that. You see, that year was short a
few days — ”

“Barry !”

“Patience, friends. It would have
been, rather, if I hadn’t played my cards
the way I did. The minute I saw that
Philip was as much worried about the
curse as I was, I tipped my mitt. From
the very beginning, the pope was the
man I was after, but I saw no easy way
of getting at him. But Philip stood
well with him and I picked him as my
candidate to do the intervening. It was
this way. While I was gone — on the
twenty-fourth of February, 1582, to be
exact — Gregory, with the advice and
consent of a flock of cardinals, mathema-
ticians and astronomers, had issued an
edict changing the calendar. The day
after October 4th was to be the fifteenth,
dropping the missing ten dates into the
nowhere. Knowing that was where
Maverick was hung up, I had to get it
changed. Since a consideration of that
sort would not have moved the pope, I
had to do it the way I did.

“History already had told me that
Gregory XIII considered Philip II a
pretty swell fellow. He had already
financed him heavily in the wars to bring
the Protestant Low Countries back into
the fold. I figured he would put out
some more to get England and Ana-
chronia. I also knew that Philip was
virtually bankrupt and did not have a
million of his own. Philip could be
counted on to rush a courier to the

THE

Vatican with my note and hock it there,
counting on repaying it when I came
across with my end. When he found
out he would get no fleet and no million
to repay the loan, Philip was in a ter-
rible dither. He jumped at my sugges-
tion that he use his influence with the
pope to have the order annulled. That’s
what was done. Spain got her armada,
the pope got his million back, Anachron
made a profit, and you got loose.”

“I told ’em that fixed-date system was
wrong,” muttered Kilmer. “They ought
to use net time spans.”

“Hey,” spoke up the emissary to
Philadelphia, “what about me? I
wasn’t stranded in 1582. I got lost in
1752. Yet Eddy, who started with me,
got to Quebec all right. How does that
fit?”

“Perfectly. The British didn’t get
around to adopting the change until
September of that year, whereas the
French made the change along with the
other Catholic countries — as soon as it
was effective. It wasn’t the date only
that counted, but where it was in force.
That explains the others. China waited
for the revolution to make the change.
, So did Russia — ”

“Yes, what about Russia?” demanded
Kilmer, sitting up and paying more at-
tention. “That expedition didn’t get
lost. It just went haywire.”

Barry grinned again.

“In Russia they split it. The Bolshe-
viks decreed the new calendar and
skipped thirteen days, but the Orthodox
Greek Church would have none of it.
Dil worth hit there on one of the non-
existent dates as far as the Soviets went,
but it was a perfectly good date from
the orthodox point of view. And since
the faithful deny the validity of the
revolution and the overthrow of the
Czar, he bumped into purely visionary
situation. Maybe if you ask the philoso-
phers how — ”

"Philosophers !” snorted Kilmer.
“Let’s all go down to the lounge and
have a drink.”

END.

Brass Tacks

One thing Astounding would very seri-
ously like to do is to help more people
retain the realisation that the future
must be different — but can be made
better.

Dear Mr. Campbell :

First let me congratulate you on
what I believe is the finest issue of
Astounding ever to roll off the presses.
The material in the February issue was
a perfect blend of the gripping realiza-
tions so often lost in science-fiction of
the last few years, and the satisfying,
theoretically correct plots. “Mimsy
Were the Borogoves” was the best story,
in my estimation. Psychological plots
appeal to a great many readers, but few'
writers have the ability or inclination to
do an acceptable job on such. My re-
spect for Padgett is most profound. The
Weapon Shop series meets the usual
high standards with some to spare, and
“Opposites React” is also very good.

Some time ago I decided to write a
special letter to Astounding at the time
of my graduation from university. A
certain Schickelgruber, whose “new' or-
der” is the oldest order in time, has
necessitated a change in those plans, so
here is my letter two years ahead of
itself :

I am greatly indebted to Astounding
for several reasons. Since 1934 it has
played a definite part in my life, as it
must have, consciously or unconsciously,
in the lives of numerous others. Be-
cause it first exerted its influence in my
twelfth year, it saved the priceless pos-
session of imagination from the rippling
it would have suffered ordinarily. At
that age I was already interested in
science, and my aptitudes were crystal-
lized and partially directed by science-
fiction.

As I read, a complex picture of the
future of mankind formed in my mind,
along with a determination to take an
active part in the making of that world.
So besides furnishing hours of pleasant
amusement, the magazine gave me a
definite aim and somewhat of an idea of
long-run aims of science itself. Even
the study of the unknown must strive
for a goal to be justified, and a scientist
must have something more than patience
and creative imagination if he is not to
be a machine. His goal must be per-
fection; not only in present-day science,
but in all the latent sciences which con-
cern people, such as psychology. There
is nothing so futile as a narrow-minded
scientist. To sneer thoughtlessly at con-
traterrene matter, extra-sensory percep-

156

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

tion, and space travel, is to denounce all
science ; for sciences they are, but as
yet their components consist of too many
unknowns to reduce to mathematical
terminology. Astounding represents a
sketchy picture of the ultimate Utopian
goal, that limit approached by the in-
finite series which is our daily life; and
of the paths leading to it. It is a lonely
pioneer exploring the vast reaches of
time, and planting signposts here and
there in the maze of eternity.

To me science-fiction means Astound-
ing. It has impressed me as being hon-
est and sincere in its work. It seems
more than mere amusement, and never
contains that degrading undercurrent of
cynicism always present in the poular-
ized pseudo-science so common today.
The credit for all this goes to Mr.
Campbell, who formulates the policies
of the magazine, and to the writers
whose material he deems worthy of
publication. I am expressing my ap-
preciation now instead of when I had
planned because of the proximity of a
call to active service. Let’s all hope
the conflict now in progress turns out
to be a short cut in the achievement of
a better world. — David L. Dobbs,
1011-17 Avenue, South East, Min-
neapolis, Minnesota.

He feels even Kramer’s heroines are
bearded he-men.

Dear Mr. Campbell :

1 have just seen a copy of the beloved
mag in its “new” size, and believe me,
nothing has done my poor old soul so
much good for many a month. I never
did like the large size because it was too
clumsy for reading in bed, and besides
the covers always got torn around the
edges, and who wants to file away a
messy copy? Seems to me that if you
want to break into the slick field, the
way to do it is by printing the mag on
slick paper, not by making it of such
size that it won’t fit into the racks
reserved for pulps.

I’ve got some opinions on the new
cover, too : Why, if you are going back
to the old size, don’t you bleed the cover
pic on three sides again? It makes the
mag seem about five percent smaller as
it is now. Another thing, why don’t you
get rid of that obnoxious square box
sticking up into the cover? It may be a
good idea to have the story connected
with the cover, but I’d rather have it up
at the top where it used to be, and not
depriving me of any of the pleasure I get
out of a really top-notch cover. This
Timmins is turning out some stuff that
stacks up pretty well beside Rogers’.

Why, oh, why, do you insist on let-
ting Kramer illustrate your lead story ?
Maybe he gives you two for the price
of one or something, but I certainly
can’t see anything in his work. He is
weak on composition, his interpretations
are indefinite, and every face he draws
looks like it needed a shave. I don't
mind it on the men so much, but even
his heroines — or am I being too romantic
for STF?— -look like the bearded lady.

And having had my say, I fold up
my typewriter like an Arab, climb into
my fourth-dimensional gyro cycle, and
silently scoot away. — Hugh R. Wahlin,
137 N. Prospect, Madison, Wisconsin.

Dinosaurs and other oddments of paleo-
zoology have been stock background
in science-fiction for years. Ley may
produce some nezv fauna.

Dear Mr. Campbell :

Whether induced by the return to the
old small size or simply by the unusually
high quality of the fiction this issue, I
have a distinct feeling that the change
which everyone seemed to look forward
to as an unpleasant necessity was for the
better instead of the worse. Be that as
it may, here’s how .things stack up in the
May Astounding:

1. “Gather, Darkness!” by Fritz
Leiber, Jr. For some reason, Mr. Leiber
has never clicked to any great degree
with me before ; I have always regarded

BRASS TACKS

157

him as a rather mediocre author. My
opinion underwent a hasty revision after
digesting “Gather, Darkness!’’ It is
more than excellent. The knowledge
that two more parts are on the way is
most pleasant — besides strengthening
my contention that serials are a must
in any magazine.

2. “Pacer,” by Raymond F. Jones.
I was tempted several times to put this
yarn in first place, despite the obvious
superiority of Leiber’s serial. Jones has
here written a straight “formula” story,
interjected several new twists, and some-
how come up with a really swell yarn.
I can’t explain this phenomena, but more
from Jones would be most welcome.

3. "Fifth Freedom,” by John Alvarez.
Not nearly as good as the Jones and
Leiber tales, but good nevertheless. It
brings up one point upon which- 1 agree
one hundred percent, let’s keep propa-
ganda out of science-fiction. Most maga-
zine propaganda is more of a joke than
a weapon against the enemy, anyway.

4. “Let’s Disappear,” by Cleve Cart-
mill. - Good, but far below Cartmill’s
standard ; he can do better .than this.

5. “Ghost,” by Henry Kuttner.

Hm-m-m, one of my favorite authors
reposing on the bottom of the fiction
list. The story was clever, well-written,
and interesting. But it wasn’t very im-
pressive ; one of those things you read
and then wonder why you spent the
time on it. Haunted machines ? I don’t
care about probability, but I think we
ought to stick to possibility in science-
fiction, remote though the possibility may
be. Kuttner does better on stories in
which he concentrates on straight, for-
mula science-fiction, and doesn’t try to
be too clever and original. There have
been exceptions, though — notably

“Nothing But Gingerbread Left.”

6. “The Old Ones,” by Willy Ley.
Interesting. But no science-fiction or
any phase of it. As it is. the article is
quite acceptable, but I cannot help but
wish that Mr. Ley had spent his time

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ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

writing about something akin to science-
fiction. After all, Astounding isn’t a
zoology — or zoogeography — j ournal.

The cover was excellent, and the en-
larged Brass Tacks very much appre-
ciated. — Chad Oliver, 3956 Ledgewood,
Cincinnati, Ohio.

llow do you decide whether a man is
an abnormally brilliant homo sapiens
or a low-grade homo superior, any-
way?

Greetings, Mr. Campbell:

I didn’t get around to writing in last
month to tell you how much I enjoyed
“Mimsy Were the Borogoves.” Evi-
dently, however, my support wasn’t
needed. Strange, isn’t it?

It is rather hard to make a choice this
month. ‘'The Weapon Makers” is a
tremendous story, and I like tremendous
stories. But it is' rather unnecessarily
obscure, I think ; little continuity ; time
element is all mixed up. Probably should
have been a few thousand words longer,
with most of the extra words devoted
to tying the various parts together.

"Escape” depicts a couple of super-
humans who seem- to be comprehensible
and still highly human — a dubious pos-
sibility, I should say, but one to be
wished for. The speech at the end
seemed to be out of character, though.

"Swimming Lesson” seems to be told
in excellent fashion, and is timely, too,
in the sense that it presents in the
scientist a type of mentality which is
blind to the lusts of others, because it
entertains no such thoughts.

"Open Secrets" presents a rather old
idea — that we are “kept” — in a unique
fashion, and a rather disturbing fashion,
also. It is hard to decide which of the
above ranks first.

The remaining story, “Abdication,” is
definitely fifth, and still is a good story.
I’ll stick them in this order:

1. “The Weapon Makers.”

2. "Swimming Lesson.”

3. “Escape.”

4. “Open Secret.”

5. “Abdication.”

Richardson finishes up his article in
good style. I notice that he says nothing
about the time involved in a trip to
Pluto, for all its “nearness” in energy
units. Willy Ley plays a dirty trick,
debunking old Tyrranosaurus Rex that
way.

Now for Probability Zero :

1. Kuttner’s “Corpus Delicti.”

2. Roscoe E. Wright’s “Ultimate Op-
position.” The point might have been
better put in this one, but the idea was
more original than most.

3. Tucker’s “Miraculous Fluid.”

Too bad Astounding and Unknown

Worlds must go back to small size; I
really like the big issues. But the change
won’t bother me as it will some. My
“collection” is simply stacked on shelves,
and size doesn’f matter much. As a
matter of fact, I think we are lucky that
both are to continue at all. — D. B.
Thompson, 1903 Polk Street, Alexan-
dria, Louisiana.

He’s planning a lot more of that future
history right now — but not in a posi-
tion to write it.

Dear Mr. Campbell:

I noticed in the April issue of
Astounding that Robert Heinlcin is
planning a new story. In 1941, you
printed part of Heinlein’s history of the
future, and there were some planned
but not written stories on it. Does
Heinlein plan to finish those stories?

I’m sorry to hear about the size change
in Astounding, but, large or small,
Astounding is still the best science-
fiction magazine on the market.

Now, for the May Analytical Lab. :

1. “The Weapon Makers.” — One of
A. E. van Vogt’s best stories. Much
better than the preceding weapon shop
stories.

2. “Swimming Lesson.” — One of the
best novelettes yet. Raymond F. Jones
is a good author.

3. “Open Secret.” — A good idea and

BRASS TACKS

159

a well-written story.

4. “Escape.” — Good.

5. “Abdication.” — Good.

The cover is very good. Timmins is
just as good as Rogers was. — Frank
Eichler, 8725-62 Road, Elmhurst, New
York.

Concerning bugs of the kind that don’t
crawl around or fly — but are exceed-
ingly annoying.

Dear Mr. Campbell :

The stories of your Mr. George O.
Smith may not be the most gripping,
stupendous, colossal science- fiction sto-
ries ever written, but they have one
salient virtue: the author of the Venus
Equilateral stories has evidently done
some actual scientific or engineering
work. Nontechnical readers who don’t
know how a laboratory actually feels
can get an excellent idea from these
stories — the first science-fiction stories,
as far as I can recall, of which this can
be said.

Quite another comment is merited by
John Alvarez' “Fifth Freedom.” Not
about the plot, characterization — con-
vincing, however distressing one may
find these sensitive, artistic youths who
simply loathe the brutal facts of ex-
istence — but about the captain’s remarks
on Page 122: “This morning . . . the
atomic tubes were just coming off the
drafting boards,” and later, “That gives
us the two weeks we need,” presumably
to get these just-hatched designs into
mass production, and, further, to get
some of the things into actual service.

I can believe in atomic-rocket air-
planes without any trouble at all. I can
believe in spaceships, disintegrators, and
even, with some effort, in antigravity
screens. But, having had a little per-
sonal acquaintance with aircraft develop-
ment and manufacture. I’ll be triply
damned if I can believe that it will ever
be possible to complete a set of drawings
on a powerful and novel weapon one
day, and a fortnight later to have the

thing ready for use in significant num-
bers. That would require powers not
of this world, and make the whole en-
terprise a fit subject for Unknown
Worlds.

What would actually happen would
be something like this : Some atomic-

rocket enthusiasts pester the Depart-
ment of National Defense for years.
The Department finally issues a set of
specifications, and various organizations,
both public and private, get to work to
develop designs to meet them. The
designs don’t begin to come in for six
months or a year. The Department
orders experimental models according
to several of the more promising designs.

Then trouble begins. Company A's
rocket is one-hundred-percent over-
weight, and its contract is cancelled.
Company B’s design requires hafnium
hypomethacrylate, which is such a criti-
cal material that the experimental ship
isn’t finished until after the war. Com-
pany C folds when the chief engineer
kills himself because one of his wives
met the other at a bridge party and
began comparing notes.

But some of the designs eventually
pan out. Let’s see what happens to one
of them, contrived by the engineers of
the National Aerodynamic Research In-
stitute. The fuselage is half finished
when the Department tells the Institute
that it must be modified to carry a
gravimetric locator. That means mov-
ing twelve systems of plumbing and
wiring — a. c., d. c., lubricating oil.
hydraulic oil, oxygen, vacuum, COs, et
cetera — around to make room for it.
This takes time: one month, in fact.

Then a visiting engineering officer
remarks: “How do you expect the

pilot to bail out at supersonic speeds
without being cut in two by the edge
of the cockpit ?” The Institute men re-
ply that they never thought of that ; and
since aviators are supposed to take
risks, is it really necessary? The officer
says they’re damned right it’s neces-
sary, and presently orders come through
to incorporate means for arresting the

160

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

machine in midair, or at least slowing
it down sufficiently to let the personnel
out. More months.

What with one thing and another, a
couple of experimental ships are ready
to fly about a year after completion of
the preliminary design. The test pilot
takes one of them up, and immediately
has his tail surfaces blown off by the
supersonic air stream. He bails out,
and the rocket dives into a swamp and
is wrecked.

The engineers design a new, stronger
set of control surfaces. The pilot takes
the second ship up, lands, and climbs
out green. “Flutter,” he explains.
“You must have moved the c. g. aft of
the hinge line.” So the tail is further
modified by stabilizing weights, with
the result that the pilot finds his con-
trols completely immobile at the higher
speeds.

“Give him a servo-mechanism,” says
the project engineer. So the design is
reworked to incorporate servos, which
add so much weight that the wing area
has to be increased to carry them, and
the landing gear strengthened, and so
on, with the result that the engineers
find themselves with a machine twice
the size of the original. More months.

Two years after the completion of the
first design, the Department gets enough
actual rockets to assign them to a
squadron who will fly them to see what
bugs develop in service. A couple of
factories begin building the rockets.
The Department, which has been catch-
ing dead cats from the public for lack of
vision, releases photographs and a few
general particulars of the rockets to the
newspapers. The public whoops ; at
last we’ve got something to sweep the
dastards off the earth next week, if
not sooner.

By the time the experimental squadron
has been flying for six months, so many
bugs have developed that production
has to be halted to incorporate scores
of changes. Another six or eight months
is required to train pilots before the
rockets are sent to the fronts. The

first ships to go into action scare their
pilots worse than the enemy. Public
opinion condemns the whole project as
a fantastic flop. And there are always
more bugs for the harassed engineers to
sweat over.

Five years after the writing of the
spec, a few practical rockets are actually
hurting the enemy. Then Company X
flies the experimental models of a super-
supersonic rocket steered by gyroscopes
instead of conventional control surfaces.
Public opinion goes off with another
whoop; why are we still building the
obsolete Institute rocket when the
mighty X rocket is available? They
don’t know that the X engineers are con-
templating seppuku because their gyros
have developed enough bugs to keep
them busy delousing for the next five
years, before the system will be practical.

Anyway, that gives you the idea. —
Caleb Northrup.

If you explored one star a week, and a
thousand similar explorers zvere at
'work, how long would it take to in-
vestigate every star in this one
Galaxy ? In ten million years of such
zvork, you could map one sector of
this Galaxy perhaps —

Dear Mr. Campbell :

If space travel is coming as we all
firmly believe, why is it that Earth has
had no visitors from space as yet ? Why
haven’t other, much higher developed
entities existing elsewhere, never come
to our planet? There must be a million
and one enormously advanced races ex-
isting in this relatively old universe of
ours ; why haven’t we heard from them ?

Either space travel is impossible or
we are the only intelligent race existing,
or rather our planet is the only one
supporting life. The third possibility,
of course, is the unknown factor.

I wish one of your very capable writ-
ers would explain this question in an
article in your magazine. — Otto Essig,
48 Manchester Terrace, Springfield
Massachusetts.

1 61

Book Review

MOON UP— MOON DOWN, by
John Alden Knight. New York,
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942. 163

pp. $2.50.

Once a retired British naval officer
noticed how many scientifically rejected
data rested on the testimony of trained
and reliable mariners. Once a Bronx
eccentric began collecting the multitudi-
nous scraps of fact that fit into no ac-
cepted scheme of things. Once a British
engineer observed the peculiar nature of
bis dreams and resolved to record and
study them.

And so Lieutenant Commander Ru-
pert T. Gould established the existence
of that curious species of marine animal
popularly known as the sea serpent,
Charles Fort raised hell among the sci-
ences in general, and J. W. Dunne revo-
lutionized the theories and the very con-
cept of time.

Now a real-estate broker has begun
worrying about the feeding times of fish,
and the result of his worries may deserve
to go on your bookshelf beside Gould
and Fort and Dunne.

For John Alden Knight resembles
those men in this : He is a layman who
has happened to grab hold of one of the
loose ends of string in that cat’s cradle
which is known as the framework of sci-
ence, and he has had the energy and the
courage to keep on pulling.

His particular loose end is this:
There are certain times of day' when fish
are unusually active and eat eagerly.
These times vary from day to day, and
are independent of regular feeding hab-
its, the availability of food, or any appar-
ent external circumstance.

Obviously if such times can be pre-
dicted accurately, the information will be
invaluable to fishermen. Well, it can be,
according to Mr. Knight ; and he should
know, since he has made a good living
for years doing just that — publishing ta-
bles which show the exact time of each
day in each part of the country when the
fish will bite.

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He has followed up this idea far be-
yond fish, and has determined by ob-
servation that there are similar predicta-
ble periods of heightened activity among
all higher animals, even in man himself.

And these periods seem to be corre-
lated with tidal movements and to de-
pend on the position of the masses of
the Sun and the Moon relative to the
Earth, whence Mr. Knight has evolved
the term “the Solunar Theory.”

But Theory is an inept term for this
curious discovery; for it is precisely in
the theoretical department that Mr,
Knight bogs down. He«masses an al-
most indisputable collection of data ; the
reader of his book comes out convinced
that some hitherto unlabeled influence
operates on all forms of life and must
henceforth be reckoned with in our con-
cepts.

But his proofs are entirely empirical.
The Solunar Theory works so well that
commercial fisheries now operate on it,
and it is not unlikely that human busi-
ness and factories could benefit by its
use ; but Mr. Knight’s attempts at ex-
plaining why it works are a sorry mix-
ture of guesswork and half-understood
patter. (The idea seems to be roughly
that a certain position of the Sun and
Moon weakens the Heaviside layer,
thereby admitting more cosmic radiation,
thereby increasing the ionization of the
atmosphere, and thereby—)

It is not, however, the duty of the
pioneer to provide the correct explana-
tion of what he has discovered. In this
little volume Mr. Knight has at least
indicated a fascinating new realm in the
borderlands of science ; and if twenty
years from now you find your working
hours being regulated according to Solu-
nar Periods, don’t say that Mr. Knight
and I didn’t warn you.

Anthony Boucher.

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